“Her eye’s dark charm ’twere vain to tellBut gaze on that of the Gazelle,It will assist thy fancy well.”
“Her eye’s dark charm ’twere vain to tellBut gaze on that of the Gazelle,It will assist thy fancy well.”
“Her eye’s dark charm ’twere vain to tellBut gaze on that of the Gazelle,It will assist thy fancy well.”
Suddenly the dark eyes opened widely, and the taper fingers clenched in a paroxysm of emotion.
“Oh, why should I waste myself upon a man who does not care for me?” she cried out bitterly. “What have I done that Heaven should grant me power to love only one man when it makes that man despise me, and prefer an ignorant Scotch country girl, whose love as compared with mine is as the shallow sea-shell to the bottomless ocean.”
“Oh, mademoiselle, give him up—let us go back, he is not worthy of you; there are a thousand handsomer, cleverer men—distinguished men too—who would kneel at your feet to-morrow—yes, mademoiselle, and put proud coronets there too; and splendid men, too, ah! if the poor companion could but choose! there are some ravishing gentlemen who visit you, and think you that I would run after a country doctor and break my heart when all the great world would come to me? Ah,mon Dieu, no.”
“Hush, madame,” replied the other, “you do not know what you are talking about. I know—of course I know, and the thought drives me nearly crazy with rage against myself—that I am doing an indelicate and unmaidenly thing in following up Dr. Dalrymple. Oh, I have fought against this love on my knees—yes, on my bended knees—but I cannot help myself. I love him,I love him,I love him! Even when I wore short dresses he was, all unknown to him, the idol of my childhood. Yes, I used to dream about him and pray God to give me him for a dear husband when I grew up. I remember him as he used to come up the church aisle on Sundays, and as he passed our cross-pew I used to redden until I fancied all the people in the church knew about my love for him. And during the sermon I never recollected the text, or remembered what the old clergyman said, I was just thinking of Richard (that is what I called him in my mind) and longing to run my fingers through his bonny curly brown hair. Andoh when his moustache began to grow, as soon as I noticed it I insisted on being put into long dresses so that I might, as it were, keep in step with him; and when I went abroad it was still the same all the years I was away; nothing ever took his boyish image out of my heart. I did not flirt and carry on like other girls, I just thought of him and waited, oh, so patiently! until my education should be completed, and I could return home practically my own mistress.
“Now, madame, do you think that love like that is going to stop because a thing seems unmaidenly, when all the happiness of my life is concerned in the result? Do you know that Dr. Dalrymple is now on his way to see hisfiancée, and that this is the most crucial period of my whole life? Oh, if I were a man, and our positions reversed, I would carry him off!”
Madame was in despair—she held up her wrinkled hands and exclaimed again and again, “mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” and then her womanly heart coming to her aid, she took the beautiful head between her hands and kissed it again and again. “God is good,” she said, softly but hopefully, “maybe it will all come right yet.”
Large tears—the advance guard of grief’s thunder shower which indicates but does not relieve the pent-up passion—gathered slowly and fell from Miss Beattison’s eyes, and the white teeth tried hard to restrain the quivering lip. But the effort was in vain, the rising sob refused to be quelled, and unable any longer to restrain her emotion, Miss Beattison covered her face and sobbed out her very soul on her old companion’s sympathetic shoulder.
“Ah,” muttered the companion aside to herself, “if I were a man and had a knife I would kill you!” and she shook her clenched fist at the invisible traveller next door.
When Carlisle station was reached Dr. Dalrymple stepped quickly from his carriage, thinking to catch a glimpse of the inmates of the adjoining compartment.
The curtains, however, were closed, and no sign of life was visible.
“Asleep, I imagine,” soliloquized the Doctor, “well, I suppose I may as well have some breakfast,” saying which he sauntered in the direction of the first-class restaurant.
When he returned the window of the carriage next door was in the same condition. “Stillasleep,” he murmured as he lit his cigar, and the train moved outward.
Dr. Dalrymple was in error, however, for the change of carriage had been effected while he was at breakfast and his whilom companions were now a dozen carriages to the rear.
At the next station, the first on Scotch soil, noticing the adjoining door open, Dr. Dalrymple inquired of the guard if the ladies were still inside the carriage. “No, sir, they left at Carlisle,” replied the guard, an answer literally correct and yet giving, and intended to give, the impression that the ladies had left the train at the station named.
“Well, well, I wonder who they were—something unique, I should say——”
“Yes, sir, quite so,” said the guard as he left the door, adding to himself, “I seem to have more than the average of unique people this trip.”
WHENRichard Dalrymple reached Barkirk he was considerably surprised to see General Beattison’s carriage awaiting the arrival of the train.
“Some visitor to the old general,” he surmised, adding under his breath with a long drawn sigh of uncertain meaning, “It really does look as if I was never to be allowed to forget that family.”
The visitor, whoever it was, was slow to alight, and Dr. Dalrymple’s hack drove off without his having cleared up the point.
The new arrival’s welcome to his native home, after so long an absence, was the heartiest conceivable, and so thoroughly was he taken possession of, that it looked as if only by some desperate subterfuge would he be able to tear himself away to call upon the object of his affections.
And here it should be told that the engagement between Richard Dalrymple and Miss JeannieFarquharson has been maintained as a profound secret by request of the latter, in order not to antagonize a wealthy and cantankerous aunt, her sole remaining relative. This state of affairs had limited the correspondence between the two, as their letters had to pass through the hands of a third person, who, knowing how cruel the tender mercies of a gossiping Scotch town are, did not care to receive too many lest she should arouse curiosity and set too many tongues wagging at her own expense.
At last, under pretence of a visit to his old friend Miss Farquharson the elder, Richard Dalrymple stood in the drawing room of Laburnum Lodge awaiting with a beating heart the arrival of hisfiancée. The servant had said Miss Farquharson was out but would return in a few minutes, and would he see Miss Jeannie?
Would he! The gods were at last propitious!
When the servant went upstairs to announce his arrival, he expected to hear, maybe, a little glad cry, and the instant rush of descending skirts.
But no, the house was still, and after a minute or two the servant returned to say Miss Jeanniewould be down directly. For a moment the room seemed to grow chilly, but his face brightened and the temperature rose again when he reminded himself that no doubt she had heard of his arrival, and it was necessary for her still to dissemble her love before tattling servants.
Presently he heard the sound of a soft foot-fall on the stairs and thefrou-frouof a lady’s dress gliding downward from step to step. His heart beat faster, the color slowly left his cheek, and a happy expectant light shone in his eyes.
Yes, there, at last, the queen of all his hopes and joys stood in the doorway, not indeed the Scotch lassie of his recollection and his dreams, but a vision of fair Northern loveliness whose very perfection chained to his side the arms he had raised to embrace her, and nailed his feet to the floor; so that the passionate embrace of welcome which he had so often rehearsed in his own mind, all miscarried.
“Miss Farquharson—Jeannie—my darling!” he exclaimed with a faltering voice regaining control of himself and stretching out, not his arms but his hand, “I scarcely know you, you have grown so beautiful—what, what have you done with myshy little Scotch lassie?” Then he laid his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes.
Yes, they at least were the same, they had not changed while he dreamed of them these three long years, but they were not wont to droop before his gaze then as now.
Then his arms stole softly around the lissom waist, and gently and almost reverentially he stooped his lips to hers.
“Oh, please, Dick, don’t,” suddenly exclaimed the young lady with a struggle, and a rapidly rising color in the clear brown cheek.
“Why, Jeannie dear, what is the matter?” queried her lover in a distressed tone. “Don’t you love me any longer, darling?”
“Oh no, it is not that, Dick dear,” with faltering voice; “but we have been parted so long, and I’ve hardly got accustomed to you yet, you seem so formidable to me now, remember you were hardly more than a boy when you left; and now you have grown so big and strong and manly-looking, it doesn’t seem at all the same thing to kiss you now.”
“Well, darling, if that is all, the strangenesswill soon pass, but dear me! this seems a cool meeting for lovers.”
“Let us sit down, Dick, and talk things over,” replied Jeannie, taking his hand and leading him to the sofa.
But Miss Farquharson’s knock was heard at the door, and they had only time to hurriedly appoint a meeting for the following day at the lonely Granton Falls, when the elder lady entered the room.
Richard Dalrymple’s mind was ill at ease during the rest of the day, and he was glad when the evening came around and he could have a confidential chat with the special friend and mentor of his old school days—Alec Douglas.
He determined to unbosom himself to his former “chum,” and receive from him the sweet solace of his sympathy as in the days of yore, when he knew Alec to be as true as steel and the best secret-keeper in the world.
Richard explained at length to his friend his relations with Miss Jeannie Farquharson, but he was too much of a Bayard to allude to Miss Beattison’s infatuation and its effect upon himself and his actions.
Alec Douglas sat silent while his friend unbosomed himself. He interrupted by no comment, but that he listened attentively may be gathered from the fact that his cigar went out unnoticed, and presently fell from his lips altogether without awaking his consciousness to the fact.
As his silence remained unbroken even after the close of the other’s confidence, Dr. Dalrymple inquired what he thought of the situation. He fancied that the expression on his friend’s face lacked the old-time sympathy he was wont to express, and yet that failed to qualify his astonishment when the other rose to his feet and after the merest pretence of looking at his watch, announced that he must leave to keep an appointment with a client.
“About your inquiry, Dick, as to what I think of the situation I can’t say anything, but I consider that I am the last person you should ask such a question,” saying which he strode out into the night.
“Well, I’m——blest if I don’t think everyone has gone back on me since I left. My sweetheart is like an icicle and my old friend is as chilly as a Norway blizzard. I feel like Rip Van Winkle who outlived or outslept all his friendships.
“What did he mean, I wonder, about his being the last person in the world I ought to ask? Is he so proud of his legal reputation that he thinks it beneath him to give an opinion about a friend’s love troubles? I suppose that is it, but if it is, this wretched little town hardens the heart worse than much abused London does.”
RICHARDDALRYMPLEspent a restless night, and counted the minutes almost until it was time to meet hisfiancéeat Granton Falls.
He had some difficulty in evading his friends, but finally managed to be at the place of rendezvous some twenty minutes before the time fixed.
The place appointed was the corner of a stone bridge which spanned the Eildon river at Granton Falls, the said falls being simply a succession of small rapids.
As Richard looked over the bridge he noticed the footpath about fifty feet lower than the bridge, and said with some anxiety: “I hope Jeannie did not mean the footpath at the falls, for if she goes there while I am here I can’t get to her without breaking my neck over those rocks.”
At that instant the sharp ring of a horse’s hoofs on the hard granite road aroused his attention, andturning round slowly, to his utter bewilderment, he saw Miss Beattison, unattended by her groom, reining in her horse by his side.
“How do you do, Doctor Dalrymple? Will you please help me to dismount, I have something to say to you.”
Then she tied her horse to the nearest sapling, and came to his side; her face white and almost stern in its set expression.
“Are you wondering how I came to be here? Well I came by the same train as you did, to find out for myself whether the secret of your indifference to me was to be found here, in this little country town; and if it was the case, dear, as I had heard that you loved another, why, then, I determined I should end my most miserable life, for to me death is a thousand times better than life without you. Please do not think ill of me, for, as Heaven is my witness, this unrequited love is more than I can bear. This lonely walk what does it mean? Are you waiting now to keep some appointment?”
As Gwendoline Beattison stood before Richard Dalrymple in all the pride of her splendid beauty, pleading the cause of her own desperate heart, hisbrain reeled before this fresh temptation. Did the struggle of all these long months and the resolution displayed in his flight count for nothing? Had he come all these long four hundred miles only to capitulate here? Perish the thought, and yet his breath came fast and faster as he gazed upon her, and his eyes faltered and fell before the terrible battery of hers. He held up his hands, palm outward, as a drowning man who finds the current too strong for him, and murmured, “Leave me. For God’s sake go away and leave me.”
That is what he meant to say—and perhaps it is what he did say—but every sense he had was surrendering to the irresistible usurper, and he could not be sure that even his speech was not betraying him.
He tried to think of Jeannie, but his very soul shook as if there, too, in the very holy of holies of his heart, a traitor was offering capitulation on the conqueror’s own terms.
Every glance was a temptation to the stricken man as Gwendoline Beattison stood before him. Her closely fitting habit revealed every throb of the over-charged bosom and told all too plainly the tempest which was convulsing it. His own heart bounded madly in response, every fibre of hispowerful frame thrilled in sympathy with the passion which shook the voluptuous figure before him, and his eyes no longer sought the ground but, alas!—bon gré mal gré—soon outdid hers in their fiery candor.
Words failed them both. It was the silence of the duel when the smallest flash of the blade may mean a life. As deadly was their silence and as vital, but their eyes—ah, their eyes spoke with a measureless volume and thrill, which deadened their ears to every earthly sound.
“Oh, why can’t you love me, dear? am I so unattractive that you must run away from me?”
As Gwendoline Beattison said this, a wonderfully soft and pathetic look came into her beautiful eyes, and, as if unable longer to control herself, she placed her two trembling hands on Richard Dalrymple’s shoulders.
“Why is it, dear—won’t you tell me?” and the voice which had been shaken by passion became strangely gentle and tender as the straying hands growing bolder stole around his neck and her beating heart in dire proximity fired his own anew.
Oh, Jeannie Farquharson why do you not hurry to the relief of your faltering lover, true to youso long in the face of a desperate temptation, but now, alas, in the toils!
Too late! the perfume which surrounded the fair temptress like an atmosphere was in his nostrils, the intoxication of her gaze mounted to his brain; her touch thrilled him to his finger-tips, his very soul tottered on its throne, and in another instant their lips met in a long clinging kiss—a kiss never to be undone, never to be forgotten, the kiss of a lifetime after which man and woman ought to die eternally, since in its rapture they have beggared Paradise!
The long ecstatic kiss ended at last, the tumultuously beating feminine heart grew still, the living, throbbing being in Richard Dalrymple’s arms became a dead weight, and Gwendoline Beattison sank back insensible, a victim to her own uncontrollable emotion.
“Oh, Dick, Dick, where are you? I saw you a minute ago.”
Such was the cry—all too late—which, welcome beyond words a few minutes ago, now sounded like the knell of doom in Richard Dalrymple’s ears.
Placing Miss Beattison’s inanimate form gentlyagainst a mossy knoll our perturbed hero presented himself over the wall of foliage and called to his lady-love, “Oh wait there, I will be with you in a minute.”
“No, stay where you are,” came back the silvery response; “you can’t come down, I will cross the river on the stepping stones and come to you.”
“Oh, but this is awful,” muttered Richard under his breath, “Jeannie will be here in three minutes and will find Miss Beattison, and how on earth can I explain things?”
Then he turned his attention to Miss Beattison, who was slowly regaining consciousness. “Are you feeling better?” he began with a wonderful softness and shamefacedness in eye and tone, when suddenly a piercing scream made him leap to his feet and run to the other side of the bridge.
“My God! Jeannie has fallen in and been swept over the rapids.”
Then he sped like a deer across the bridge, down the sloping bank at the further side and past the rushing rapids to the whirling pool where poor Jeannie, still partially buoyed up by her clothes, was whirling around in the grasp of the fatal current.
AWILDthrill of remorse shot through Richard Dalrymple’s heart even as he sprang headlong into the whirlpool, and then he felt as if he was fighting for his life in the embrace of a hundred devil-fish.
This way and that the currents buffeted him, fed in their strength by the momentum of the rapids above, until all the breath was battered out of his body. Suddenly a wayward current threw him against a projecting rock which he caught, thereby probably saving his life. A coward would have ceased his efforts at this point, but not so Richard Dalrymple. Once more the form of his sweetheart met his eye, this time in the pool beyond. Gathering himself up with such strength as he had left, he climbed over the intervening rocks and again plunged to the rescue.
This time his effort was successful. With choking words of encouragement, to cheer his sweetheart, who was fast losing consciousness, by an Herculean effort he swam with her to the lower shore and pushed her gently before him on to the low bank. All at once the friendly swirl of the current changed and he was borne out into the centre of the whirlpool. Again he caught the point of a rock, this time with his feet, and by swimming with all his force, he maintained for a short space a precarious foothold.
He knew that in a very few minutes, his strength being gone, he must cease his efforts and then——
His brain seemed to become cleared as his strength failed. “Perhaps things are happening for the best,” he thought as his arms became like lead, his feet wavered in their hold, and a circling wave caught him in its arms and whirled him off into the lower rapids.
When through the rush of water in his ears he heard a loud cry and his failing sight caught the figure of a woman on horseback dashing in to the foaming current, even in his death throes his heart thrilled as he recognized the form of Miss Beattison.
“Steady, Saladin, steady, now.” He heard the ringing tones, he felt a strong touch on hisshoulder, and then he was dragged from the foaming water, out of the jaws of death and on to the shelving edge of pebbles which here replaced the jagged rock.
Although considerably bruised by being hurled against the rock by the powerful current, none of Richard Dalrymple’s bones were broken and in a few minutes he was able to rise to his feet. He had already been assured by Miss Beattison that Miss Farquharson was reviving. As he rose Miss Beattison was standing by the side of Saladin, who was still panting from his tremendous fight with the current. Saladin’s head was between the two, and it seemed at first as if neither cared to round the dangerous point and meet each other after the episode of the bridge.
This time, however, the man was the bolder, and presently Richard Dalrymple stood face to face with Gwendoline Beattison. For an instant her eyes met his with a startled look of conscious shyness, then the downward sweep of the dark lashes veiled their expression, and only the faint color in the cheeks told of the maiden’s agitation.
“Miss Beattison, you have saved my life, I thank you for it;” here he raised her hand and gentlykissed it; “but indeed I think it would have been better for us all if you had let me drown. Try to forget all that has passed between us to-day, and permit me to assist you to your saddle. I must go to Miss Farquharson’s aid.”
“Miss Farquharson is in good hands, she is with the gentleman she is about to marry,” was the response in a somewhat uneven tone of voice.
“What can you mean, Miss Beattison? Miss Farquharson is engaged to myself.”
“To you?” exclaimed the other reining in her horse abruptly. “Oh, the shock of your narrow escape must have then affected your brain,—but look for yourself.”
By this time the two had rounded the corner which hid Miss Farquharson from view, and a glance revealed his friend, Alec Douglas, sitting on a boulder with his arm round the waist of Miss Farquharson, whose head lay confidingly on his shoulder.
For a moment, Richard Dalrymple stiffened as if turned into marble, and then arresting the motion of his companion with a wave of his hand he stepped swiftly over the noiseless stretch of sand towards the pair whose backs were towards him.
“MYdarling,” he heard the voice of his friend Alec Douglas saying, “what should I have done if you had been drowned, my bonnie blue-eyed forget-me-not. Who rescued you?”
The grim listener had heard the name of that little flower before, and his lip curled scornfully and bitterly as he heard it now applied by the mouth of another to the woman whom he had always worshipped as his own.
Just for a moment he experienced a passing twinge as a reminder of the scene on the bridge where he had scarcely proven himself the knight without reproach.
But that was only a momentary yielding to a terrible temptation; a man surrenders very little in such an encounter compared with a woman.
Thus he reasoned to himself while his heart told him that such an argument in his case was false, false as the bottomless pit; and that never againin life could he rebuild against that besieger on the bridge, the broken walls and citadel of his heart.
But no man lessens his rage at the defection of another—especially if that other is a woman upon whom he has claims—simply because he happens to be conscious of a like personal frailty; and so, although he staggered under the accusation of his own heart, Richard Dalrymple abated not one whit the contempt of the glance he turned on the unconscious Jeannie.
And beyond all doubt he suffered acutely, although in the tumult of his mind he was conscious of wondering why he did not suffer more. The treachery of his sweetheart shattered an idol on whose worn shrine he had lavished all the love and fealty of his manhood’s freshest years, and around which he had twined the fairest garlands which youth’s blind unquestioning idolatry can weave.
That the idol he had worshipped was nobler than the divinity it represented, goes without saying where youth’s lofty ideal is unchecked and uncorrected by a continual comparison with the original.
Thus poor Jeannie had fallen not only from herself,but she had fallen deeper far from the high ideal her lover had fixed in his mind.
“A badly broken idol,” Richard Dalrymple said in looking at Jeannie—and notwithstanding all the ravage done to his own feelings, he was painfully conscious that it was a badly damaged idolater too, who looked on.
“Who rescued you, my darling?” repeated Alec Douglas.
“Oh dear, dear,” sobbed his companion, “how can I tell you? the man who saved my life was your friend Richard Dalrymple, and—- and he believes I am engaged to be married to him. Oh, please don’t be angry with—me, it was only a girlish love which I have outgrown, and I don’t love anyone but you, darling. I had not written to him for months and I thought he would understand that I wished everything to end between us.”
To the onlooker the idol seemed more than broken now, it was pulverized to very fine powder indeed.
A heavy shadow falling across the two lovers caused them to turn, and to find themselves face to face with a haggard and dishevelled man, whosepallid face and dark upbraiding eye, caused them to spring hastily to their feet.
Before the image confronting them both found themselves speechless.
“Is that true what you have been saying, Jeannie?” inquired Richard in a hollow voice, “that your love for me was but a girlish fancy, and that you love Douglas here—my old friend Alec, to whom I confided my secret last night?”
No answer save that of downcast eye and burning cheek, and presently a glance of wonderful regret and misery under the long level lashes.
“Betrayed by both betrothed and bosom friend! haveyounothing to say, Douglas?”
“Yes, indeed, I have, Dalrymple,” replied the other; “now, old friend, bear with me awhile. I swear to you I did not know of your engagement until last night—and as far as Jeannie is concerned, she was just telling me that as she had not written you for so long she thought you would understand that she wished to end the engagement. You know,” turning softly to Jeannie and laying a gentle caressing hand on her head, “if there is one thing this little girl dreads more than another it is anything approaching a quarrel, and she putoff telling you of the change in her feelings thinking that you would scold and make a dreadful upset about it. Of course the whole thing is a terrible mistake all through, but, Dick, I never betrayed a friend in my life, and I would have killed myself rather than have made love to your sweetheart if I had known it.”
At this the gentle Jeannie gave a scarcely perceptible toss of her fair head as if to say, “That just shows how much wiser my way was.”
“I see, I see,” exclaimed the other bitterly, “I have only my own blind unsuspecting devotion to thank for all this. If I had doubted and mistrusted like other men this thing would never have happened. Alec, I bearyouno malice, you did not know. Jeannie, you made light work of a heart that deserved better from you.”
“Oh, Dick,dearDick, please——” began Jeannie, but he waved her away. “Please leave me,” he added bitterly, “and if I must do without your love, at least spare me the insult of your pity. Take back your forget-me-nots and broken coin,” he added, taking the cigar-case and coin from his pocket and handing them to her still wet with the whirling pool from which he had saved her.
Jeannie would have replied, but the wise Alec, recognizing that much lee-way must be allowed to the disappointed lover, motioned her not to speak, and in silence they left as Richard turned on his heel and strode away across the sand.
When he turned he expected to find himself if not face to face with, at least within reach of, Miss Beattison, and the fact that she was not in sight sent a keen and to him mysterious pang to his heart. He felt he needed the sympathy of someone whose tenderness would not be an insult, and now the only being whom he felt could have poured balm on his wounds had disappeared.
He sat down by the water’s edge to think out the new scheme of his life under the altered conditions of the morning, and somehow the tumult of the broken waves seemed a suitable back ground to his thoughts.
For a while he sat in silence revolving the morning’s events in his mind, and after a time he drew from his pocket two objects which we, the readers, have seen before.
One was the photograph of Miss Farquharson, and the other the handkerchief found in the train. The former, blurred and defaced by theaction of the water in his rescue of Miss Farquharson, caused him to smile a sad, bitter, miserable smile, to which a tear would have been preferable.
“The river ends it all,” he said as he tossed the photograph into the torrent, “I almost wish it had ended me too.”
Then his eye fell upon the cambric handkerchief found in the train, and a warmth seemed to steal from it, wet and crumpled as it was, which set his heart beating to a faster measure.
“It seems to me,” he said softly, “as if all these long years I had been prizing the shell and neglecting the priceless pearl.” Then, as he kissed the handkerchief again and again—and now at last without remorse—his mind travelled back to the scene on the bridge. Again in his vision there arose the love illumined eyes and passionate glance of the woman whom he was fain to confess now he had loved fondly even when he fled from her. The passion of her presence seemed again to thrill him as he sat there pressing her handkerchief to his lips, and in the fever of his unrest he sprang to his feet and turned towards the highway, only tofind himself face to face with Gwendoline Beattison herself.
For a moment the love-light still burning in his eyes seemed to surprise and dazzle her, and then as he opened wide his arms and murmured the one word “darling,” she fled to his heart with a glad cry.
There, eye to eye, heart to heart, and soul to soul, love’s dominion was restored, and Cupid’s glancing arrows at length found their rightful mark.
THE END.