CHAPTER IV.
How glad she was when he opened his eyes again, and faltered:
“I am quite ashamed of myself, fainting away like a weak woman. I will promise not to do so again, doctor.”
Doctor Barnes quickly made him as easy as possible, and left him to the widow’s care, promising to call again that evening to see how he fared, and also to send word to the livery stable about the horse and trap.
Leola felt she had no further excuse for staying, although, somehow, she could not bear to go.
She went into the room to say farewell, and he entreated her to stay, in a weak voice, reinforced by pleading eyes.
She smiled, and shook her head.
“It is better I should go now, for the doctor says you must have absolute rest and quiet to-day, and I am a sad chatterbox, but I will come to-morrow and bring you some flowers,” she promised.
She pressed his hand in mute farewell, and the contact thrilled her with rapturous emotion, for even with his pallor and his bandaged head he appeared to her a king among men—a veritable Prince Charming.
A great change had come to her heart since she rode out so blithely that morning, and the words of her simple song were coming true:
“A honey-comb and a honey-flower.And the bee shall have his hour.”
“A honey-comb and a honey-flower.And the bee shall have his hour.”
“A honey-comb and a honey-flower.And the bee shall have his hour.”
“A honey-comb and a honey-flower.
And the bee shall have his hour.”
She forgot all about her errand to town, and, remounting Rex, went for a long ride, miles away, to a beautiful Blue Sulphur Spring, where she lingered for hours upon the green lawn, dreaming over and over the startling event of the day, and gazing anon into the sparkling depths of the water, as if she might read in its pellucid depths the secret of her future.
And she recalled, with a sudden thrill, the gypsy who had told her fortune last year, saying:
“You will have a handsome, blue-eyed husband, and you will adore each other; but beware of jealousy, or it will part you forever.”
Leola had laughed at the gypsy then, but now she recalled her prophecy with a prophetic thrill.
“A handsome, blue-eyed husband! He has blue eyes!” she said—which showed that her thoughts already reached forward to the unknown future.
“Our feelings and our thoughtsTend ever on and rest not in the present.”
“Our feelings and our thoughtsTend ever on and rest not in the present.”
“Our feelings and our thoughtsTend ever on and rest not in the present.”
“Our feelings and our thoughts
Tend ever on and rest not in the present.”
When she returned home she had temporarily forgotten all about her little tiff with Wizard Hermann that morning, and as she saw him nowhere about, it did not occur to her mind. She avoided every one, which was not hard to do, the household consisting of only five members—her guardian and self, her former governess, who now combined teaching and housekeeping by way of economy, a fat black cook, and a man of all work, a misshapen, dwarfish creature of tremendous strength.
The day and night seemed interminably long to Leola, who lay awake many hours through pure joy of this blissful something that had come so suddenly into the placid current of her young life. Heaven forefend her from ever knowing the wakefulness of sorrow!
Bright and early the next morning she was out in the old-fashioned garden, gathering roses, dewy sweet and lovely, and it was not difficult to coax black Betsy for a bit of early breakfast before the others appeared.
Then, because she did not want to seem too anxious, Leola walked the two miles to Widow Gray’s cottage.
When Wizard Hermann asked at breakfast after the truant, Betsy, who was bringing in the toast, answered that “young miss” had gone to carry some flowers to a sick friend.
“Humph!” was his careless rejoinder, little dreaming that the sick friend was a charming young man who had already carried Leola’s heart by storm.
Meanwhile the young girl went blithely on her way, glad at heart with a strange, new emotion, yet not realizing why the world seemed so much sweeter than yesterday, the flowers fairer, the skies brighter, and all nature attuned to a diviner melody. Even her own rare beauty had gained another indefinable charm from the vibrations of love, pulsing joyfully through all her frame. She knew that she was drawn by invisible cords to the handsome stranger, but she imputed it to keen interest in one she had saved from death.
Widow Gray welcomed her with beaming smiles.
“Oh, Miss Mead, such a rapid improvement you never saw in your life! Why, after he had rested all day and night, he was like another man, and the doctor let him dress this morning and lie on the lounge in his room. He says he has no internal trouble at all, and need only stay in a few days till his head gets well. Wasn’t he lucky? for the doctor says the tumble might have killed him, and that it was a miracle it didn’t. But, laws, he’s as right as a trivet, and has taken a poached egg and bit of toast this morning. What sweet, sweet flowers! Come right in, do, and see him; he’s expecting you.”
How his blue eyes beamed as she entered with the flowers! Leola would never forget that look to her dying day.
“You are come at last!” he cried, happily. “I have been hoping and watching for you more than an hour! I should have been in a fever of impatience if you had stayed away much longer!”
“And yet it is quite early. See, the dew is not yet dry on the roses I brought you,” smiled Leola, as she drew a chair close to his side.
“Are you not glad I escaped with so slight injury?” he exclaimed, joyously. “And only to think that I owe my life to you! How can I repay you but by devoting it to your service?”
This was very rapid love-making, indeed. Leola, with her very limited experience that way, felt it was so, yet somehow she could not chide him. Her heart beat very fast, her cheeks flamed crimson, and when she tried to look away from him she could not help his gaze from holding hers in a long look into her soul that was trying to hide from him beneath her dark, curling lashes. In that moment of pure rapture Sir Cupid transfixed both their hearts with his cunning arrow. They were no more strangers; they seemed to have known each other in some past incarnation.
Leola thought, thrillingly:
“Surely this is love that makes my heart beat so fast and my cheeks burn under his glance, that holds my own so that I cannot look away! He is my fate!”
The young stranger was saying to himself, quite as romantically:
“Before I saw this exquisite creature I was madly in love with her shadow, and now that we have met, my heart is in her keeping forever. I owe her my very life, and I will be her true knight—and swear eternal fealty to my liege lady!”
He reached out and caught her hand, saying, deeply and tenderly:
“Forgive me if I seem too hasty, but something urges me on to confess my love before some unknown fate comes between us. Leola, am I too hasty, or may I hope to win your heart?”
The lashes fell against her blushing cheeks as she murmured:
“I—I—how strange that you have learned to love me—like that—since only yesterday!”
“I loved you weeks before I ever met you,” was his startling reply; and as she cried out in wonder over that, he continued, fondly:
“A few weeks ago, in New York, a young lady loaned me some negatives to copy. She had made them with her camera while out in the mountains last summer, she said. Among these negatives were such charming views of a young girl, that I fell in love with the pictures as soon as I made them. I did not rest until I found out where the girl lived, her name, and, in short, all there was to learn about her. Then I took the train for West Virginia, and on arriving at Alderson I started out the same morning to find you, Leola; for, of course, you have guessed it was yourself! Directly my horse took fright; and only fancy my feelings when I saw you coming toward me on your white pony, a perfect vision of youth and joy and beauty, and realized that a horrible death might thrust us apart in another fatal moment. You saved my life, and can you wonder I look upon you as my fate—the fairest fate that ever life gave to a man?”
He paused, pressed the hand he held again ardently, and added, musingly:
“How strangely everything has come about! I thought I should have to get acquainted with you in a very proper way, and go through a ceremonious courtship before I proposed, but fate took it all out of my hands. Now, what have you to say to this, my dear girl? Will you let me hope to win your love?”
“It is yours already,” Leola confessed, with exquisite frankness; then, as herapturously kissed her trembling hand, she exclaimed, in wonder at herself:
“Oh, perhaps you think I am too lightly won when I do not even know your name!”
“That can be remedied very soon. Call me Ray Chester, an artist, who wishes he were richer for your sweet sake.”
“Then you are poor?” Leola questioned, gravely.
“Do you regret it?” he asked, sadly.
“I—I—don’t know. Cousin Jessie always advised me never to marry poor. It is Jessie Stirling, I mean. She loaned you the negatives, did she not?”
“Yes; but I am sorry she put such notions in your pretty head. Perhaps you will take back your promise, learning I am poor.”
“Oh, no, no, no! Never! I could not marry any one without love, but Jessie says she would take a fright if he had a million dollars. However, she has ‘hooked,’ so she says, a big fish, rich, and young, and handsome, too, and she wants, when she is married, for me to visit her so she can make a grand match for me.”
“I will save her the trouble,” said Ray Chester. “Love in a cottage will be our portion, my darling, but you are so lovely that I shall paint a picture of you that will perhaps make my fortune!”
Suddenly a shadow clouded her lovely eyes. She had remembered for the first time her guardian’s threat of yesterday.
“You look sad, Leola. Are you repenting your promise already?” her lover cried, anxiously.
“I shall never repent. I believe you are my fate!” the girl exclaimed, earnestly, and to herself she thought:
“I will not tell him of my guardian’s foolish plans for wedding me to a rich man yet, for perhaps he will give it up after my frank refusal to obey him. No; I will not even think of it again; he cannot coerce me, for I will tell him I have already chosen my husband.”