The Young Seigneur Part 4

I was introduced to her at the Mackenzie's, at a toboggan party given for Lockhart, the son, my friend.

Shall I ever forget our slide on the toboggan hill and my emotions in that simple question, "Will you slide with me?"

I was already far into a _grande pa.s.sion_,--foolish and desperate.

She a.s.sented, stepped over to my toboggan kindly, sat down and placed her feet under its curled front. The crown of the hill about us was illumined by a circle of Chinese lanterns, and the moon, rising in the East, reflected a dim light on the fields of snow. I lifted the toboggan, gave the little run and leaped on at the end of the cushion, with my foot out behind to steer. Immediately we shot down the first descent, and as I straightened the course of the quick-flying leaf of maple wood, I felt it correspond as if intelligently. The second descent spurred our rate to an electric speed. As I bent forward, the snow flying against my face, the sound of sliding growing louder and shriller, and my foot demanding a sterner pressure to steer, a surge of exhilarating emotions suddenly rushed over me, and a thought cried "This is Alexandra! Alexandra whom you love."

"Alexandra!" my heart returned, "I am so near you!" Her two thick golden plaits of hair fell just before my eyes. She was sitting calm and straight. The toboggan shot on like a flash, and the drift beat fiercely in my eyes. But why should I heed? Away! Away! Leave everything behind us and speed thou out with me, love, into some region where I can reveal to thee alone this earnest soul which thou has awakened into such devotion!

Yet lo, our race slackening, the moment was even then over, and having carried us straight as an arrow, the toboggan undulated gracefully like a serpent over a little rising in the path and came to a stand. She rose. The light of the rising moon just enabled me to still catch the threaded yellow of her hair and the translucent complexion.

One had been following us closely. "Permit me--this next is ours, Miss Grant," he said, hastening eagerly forward to her, and I saw it was Quinet.

I marked the deference which every one, old and young, paid to her, and at the house afterwards I looked on while a boisterous knot were teaching her euchre.

"Change your ace," whispered Annie Lockhart, that pretty gambler.

"But," she replied aloud in her frank, innocent manner, "_Wouldn't that be wrong?_"

The words came to me with the force of an oracle.

"Let me bow my head," I thought, "My patron! My angel!" and as I looked upon her, pa.s.sionate reverence overpowered me.

"What am I that I dare to love you and raise my eyes towards your pure light? I am not worthy to love you!"

"And you are so beautiful!"

As my meditations were pouring along in this absorbed way, a friend of ours, Grace Carter, a girl of the light, subtly graceful English type and a gay confidence of leadership, came across the room.

"O Mr. Haviland," she cried, "I've been watching your dolorous expression till I determined to learn how you do it!"

I half smiled at her, helplessly.

"It is thoroughly fifth-act. The young man looks that way when he marches around in the limelight moonlight contemplating the approach of the catastrophe. But what have you to do with catastrophes? Off the stage men only have that desperate look when they are in love. I trust you are safe, Mr. Haviland."

She looked so arch that I could not help a laugh, though the effect jarred on my mood.

"You will find me dull, I am afraid," I answered.

"That's of no consequence. Self-education is my mission. Believe me, I thirst for this knack of lugubriousness."

I would have resented the trifling at that moment from almost any person but Grace. She divined my discomfort, veered her questioning to College affairs, and detailed to me some amusing information on dances and engagements, to which I listened with what attention I could. But my eyes persisted in resting oftener and oftener on Alexandra, and some bread baked by her and Annie,--a triumph of amateur housekeeping--being pa.s.sed by the latter in pieces among the cake, I imagined that it tasted like the sacrament, and utterly lost track of what the merry girl was saying. She left me to flood out her spirits on a friend who was rising to go; whereupon I recollected myself.

Behold Quinet, poor fellow, Quinet is too earnest for Society. Some supercilious young creature has cut him to the quick for commencing a historical remark. Smarting under his rebuke he withdraws a step or two.

A kind voice accosts him; it is Alexandra. "Come here and speak to me, Mr. Quinet. You always talk what is worth while." "To talk of what is worth while makes enemies," he answered bitterly: "I am thinking of giving it up." "You should not do that," she said. "If I were a man I would think of nothing but the highest things."

The night's sleep was broken by visions of her, as I had just seen her, so near, so fair. I tried to force my imagination into s.n.a.t.c.hes of remembrance of her face as colored and clear-outlined as the reality--bearing the n.o.ble expression it had worn when she said "Would not that be wrong?"

How I sank into self-contempt by comparison!

I wonder if Englishmen feel the pa.s.sion of love as we French do.

"I love her, I love her," was my burning e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. "Yet how dare I love her! I am unworthy to stand in her presence! There is only left for me to purify and burn and subdue my heart until it is completely worthy of her holy sight. Worthy of her! And what is worthy of her?"

Again her presence pa.s.sed before me and a voice seemed to cry "The highest things!"

Thenceforth "The highest things" should be my search, and nothing less.

My ambitions had advanced a second step.

CHAPTER IX.

a.s.sORTED ENTHUSIASMS.

"Ici bas tous les lilas meurent; Tous les chants des oiseaux sont courts; Je cherche aux etes qui demeurent Toujours."

--SULLY-PRUDHOMME.

And now of the influences which shaped that quest of "the highest things." There were the conversations in our Secret Society, the "Centre-Seekers." Picture a winter's eve, a cosy fire, a weird hall, and a group whose initiation oath was simply "I promise to be sincere."

"There is the solution of Epicurus," remarks Holyoake, our Agnostic; "Pleasure, at least, is real. Wrap yourself in it, for you can do no better. Contentment is but one pleasure, as Salvation is another, and even sensuality may be best to you."

"How about the man who lives for his children?" asked young Fred. Lyle, whose ruddy face was made brighter by the fire glow.

"He has his enjoyment reflected from theirs."

"What do you think of the friend in 'Vanity Fair,' who helps his rival?"

"One of the fools," replied Holyoake, with an air of settling the matter.

Lyle reflected.

"I can't believe it that way," he said thoughtfully.

One member was Lome Riddle; a big bluff chap with a promising moustache, encouraged by private, tuition. "Come along there, Haviland," he exclaimed, "a n.o.b like you should be one of the 'boys!'" These fellows don't know what life is--but to think of a man of muscle going back on us!

"Kick not against the prigs, Riddle!" cried Little Steele in facetious delight.

"Riddle, Riddle, thou art but a poor Philistine."

"A man of Gath," contributed another.

"The Philistine has his uses. He is the successful of Evolution,"

p.r.o.nounced Holyoake.