The Mississippi Bubble Part 8

"And so I have been," broke in her suitor. "My people were friends of yours before we two were born. Why, then, should you advise your servant, as you have, fairly to deny me admission at the door?"

"I have done ill enough to admit you. Had I dreamed of this last presumption on your part I should never have seen your face again."

"'Tis not presumption," said the young man, his voice low and even, though ringing with the feeling to which even he dared not give full expression. "I myself might call this presumption in another, but with myself 'tis otherwise."

"Sir," said Lady Catharine Knollys, "you speak as one not of good mind."

"Not of good mind!" broke out John Law. "Say rather of mind too good to doubt, or dally, or temporize. Why, 'tis plain as the plan of fate! It was in the stars that I should come to you. This face, this form, this heart, this soul--I shall see nothing else so long as I live! Oh, I feel myself unworthy; you have right to think me of no station. Yet some day I shall bring to you all that wealth can buy, all that station can mean. Catharine--dear Lady Kitty--dear Kate--"

"I like not so fast a soothsaying in any suitor of mine," replied Lady Catharine, hotly, "and this shall go no further." Her hand restrained him.

"Then you find me distasteful? You would banish me? I could not learn to endure it!"

Lady Catharine looked at him curiously. "Actually, sir," said she, "you cause me to chill. I could half fear you. What is in your heart? Surely, this is a strange love-making."

"And by that," cried John Law, "know, then the better of the truth.

Listen! I know! And this is what I know--that I shall succeed, and that I shall love you always!"

"'Tis what one hears often from men, in one form or another," said the girl, coolly, seating herself as she spoke.

"Talk not to me of other men--I'll not brook it!" cried he, advancing toward her a few rapid paces. "Think you I have no heart?" His eye gleamed, and he came on yet a step in his strange wooing. "Your face is here, here," he cried, "deep in my heart! I must always look upon it, or I am a lost man!"

"'Tis a face not so fair as that," said the Lady Catharine, demurely.

"'Tis the fairest face in England, or in the world!" cried her lover; and now he was close at her side. Her hand, she knew not how, rested in his own. Something of the honesty and freedom from coquetry of the young woman's nature showed in her next speech, inconsequent, illogical, almost unmaidenly in its swift sincerity and candor.

"'Tis a face but blemished," said she, slowly, the color rising to her cheek. "See! Here is the birth-mark of the house of Knollys. They tell me--my very good friends tell me, that this is the mark of shame, the bar sinister of the hand of justice. You know the story of our house."

"Somewhat of it," said Law.

"My brother is not served of the writ when Parliament is called. This you know. Tell me why?"

"I know the so-called reason," replied John Law. "'Twas brought out in his late case at the King's Bench."

"True. 'Twas said that my grandfather, past eighty, was not the father of those children of his second wife. There is talk that--"

"'Twas three generations ago, this talk of the Knollys shortcoming. I am not eighty. I am twenty-four, and I love you, Catharine Knollys."

"It was three generations ago," said the Lady Catharine, slowly and musingly, as though she had not heard the speech of her suitor. "Three generations ago. Yet never since then hath there been clean name for the Banbury estate. Never yet hath its peer sat in his rightful place in Parliament. And never yet hath eldest daughter of this house failed to show this mark of shame, this unpurged contempt for that which is ordained. Surely it would seem fate holds us in its hands."

"You tell me these things," said John Law, "because you feel it is right to tell them. And I tell you of my future, as you tell me of your past.

Why? Because, Lady Catharine Knollys, it has already come to matter of faith between us."

The girl leaned back against the wall near which she had seated herself.

The young man bent forward, taking both her hands quietly in his own now, and gazing steadily into her eyes. There was no triumph in his gaze. Perhaps John Law had prescience of the future.

"Oh, sir, I had far liefer I had never seen you," cried Catharine Knollys, bending a head from whose eyes there dropped sudden tears.

"Ah, dear heart, say anything but that!"

"'Tis a hard way a woman must travel at best in this world," murmured the Lady Catharine, with wisdom all unsuited to her youth. "But I can not understand. I had thought that the coming of a lover was a joyous thing, a time of happiness alone."

"Ah, now, in the hour of mist can you not foresee the time of sunshine?

All life is before us, my sweet, all life. There is much for us to do, there are so many, many days of love and happiness."

But now the Lady Catharine Knollys veered again, with some sudden change of the inner currents of the feminine soul.

"I have gone far with you, Mr. Law," said she, suddenly disengaging her hand. "Yet I did but give you insight of things which any man coming as you have come should have well within his knowledge. Think not, sir, that I am easy to be won. I must know you equally honest with myself.

And if you come to my regard, it must be step by step and stair by stair. This is to be remembered."

"I shall remember."

"Go, then, and leave me for this time," she besought him. But still he could not go, and still the Lady Catharine could not bid him more sternly to depart. Youth--youth, and love, and fate were in that room; and these would have their way.

The beseeching gaze of an eye singular in its power rested on the girl, a gaze filled with all the strange, half mandatory pleading of youth and yearning. Once more there came a shift in the tidal currents of the woman's heart. The Lady Catharine slowly became conscious of a delicious helplessness, of a sinking and yielding which she could not resist. Her head lost power to be erect. It slipped forward on a shoulder waiting as by right. Her breath came in soft measure, and unconsciously a hand was raised to touch the cheek pressed down to hers. John Law kissed her once upon the lips. Suddenly, without plan--in spite of all plan--the seal of a strange fate was set forever on her life!

For a long moment they stood thus, until at length she raised a face pale and sharp, and pushed back against his breast a hand that trembled.

"'Tis wondrous strange," she whispered.

"Ask nothing," said John Law, "fear nothing. Only believe, as I believe."

Neither John Law nor the Lady Catharine Knollys saw what was pa.s.sing just without the room. They did not see the set face which looked down from the stairway. Through the open door Mary Connynge could see the young man as he stepped out of the door, could see the conduct of the girl now left alone in the drawing-room. She saw the Lady Catharine sink down upon the seat, her head drooped in thought, her hand lying languidly out before her. Pale now and distraught, the Lady Catharine Knollys wist little of what went on before her. She had full concern with the tumult which waged riot in her soul.

Mary Connynge turned, and started back up the stair unseen. She paused, her yellow eyes gone narrow, her little hand clutched tight upon the rail.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX

IN SEARCH OF THE QUARREL

As Law turned away from the door of the Knollys mansion, he walked with head bent forward, not looking upon the one hand or the other. He raised his eyes only when a pa.s.sing horseman had called thrice to him.

"What!" cried Sir Arthur Pembroke. "I little looked to see you here, Mr.

Law. I thought it more likely you were engaged in other business--"

"Meaning by that--?"

"What should I mean, except that I supposed you preparing for your little affair with Wilson?"

"My little affair?"

"Certainly, with Wilson, as I said. I saw our friend Castleton but now, and he advised me of your promptness. He had searched for you for days, he being chosen by Wilson for his friend--and said he had at last found you in your lodgings. Egad! I have mistook your kidney completely. Never in London was a duel brought on so swift. 'Fight? This afternoon!' said you. Jove! but the young bloods laughed when they heard of it. 'b.l.o.o.d.y Scotland' is what they have christened you at the Green Lion. 'He said to me,' said Charlie, 'that he was slow to find a quarrel, but since this quarrel was brought home to him, 'twere meet 'twere soon finished.