A Mad Love, Charlotte Mary Brame [read this if txt] 📗

/> She looked up at him with dark, lustrous, gleaming eyes.

"Does all love end in sorrow?" she asked, simply.

He looked musingly at the moonlit waters, musingly at the starlit sky.

"I cannot tell," he replied, "but it seems to me that it ends more in sorrow than in joy. I should say," he continued, "that when truth meets truth, where loyalty meets loyalty, the ending is good; but where a true heart finds a false one, where loyalty and honor meet lightness and falsehood, then the end must be bad."

Leone seemed suddenly to remember that she was talking to a stranger, and, of all subjects, they had fallen on love.

"I must go," she said, hurriedly. "You will remember the way."

"Pray do not go--just this minute," he said. "History may repeat itself; life never does. There can never be a night half so fair as this again; the water will never fall with so sweet a ripple; the stars will never shine with so bright a light; life may pass, and we may never meet again. You have a face like a poem. Stay a few minutes longer."

"A face like a poem." Did he really think so?

The words pleased her.

"Strange things happen in real life," he said; "things that, told in novels and stories, make people laugh and cry out that they are exaggerated, too romantic to be real. How strange that I should have met you here this evening by the side of the mill-stream--a place always haunted by poetry and romance. You will think it stranger still when I tell you your face has haunted me all day."

She looked at him in surprise. The proud, beautiful face grieved at the words.

"How is that?" she asked.

"I saw you this morning when I was going to Rashleigh with my friend, Sir Frank Euston. You were standing against a white gate, and I thought--well, I must not tell you what I thought."

"Why?" she asked, briefly.

"Because it might offend you," he replied.

He began to perceive that there was no coquetry in this beautiful girl. She was proud, with a calm, serene, half-tragic pride. There would be no flirtation by the side of the mill-stream. She looked as far above coquetry as she was above affectation. He liked the proud calm of her manner. She might have been a duchess holding court rather than a country girl sitting by a mill-wheel. The idea occurred to him; and then his wonder increased--who was she? and what was she doing here?

"Do you live near here?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "behind the trees there you can see the chimneys of a farmhouse; it is called Rashleigh Farm; my uncle, Robert Noel, lives there; and I am his niece."

"His niece," repeated the young man, in an incredulous voice. She was a farmer's niece, then, after all; and yet she looked like a Spanish princess.

"You do not look like an English girl," he said, gravely.

"My father was English and my mother a Spanish lady; and I--well, I fear I have more of the hot fire of Spain than of the chill of England in my nature; my face is Spanish, so is my heart."

"A Spaniard is quick to love, quick to hate; forgives grandly and revenges mercilessly," he said.

"That is my character," she said; "you have described it exactly."

"I do not believe it; neither hate nor revenge could exist with a face like yours. Then your name is Noel?"

"Yes, my name is Leone Noel," she replied.

"Leone," he repeated, "that is a beautiful name. I have never heard it before; but I like it very much; it is musical and rare--two great things in a name."

"It is a German name," she said. "My uncle Robert hates it; he says it reminds him of Lion; but you know it is pronounced Leon. My mother read some German story that had the name in it and gave it to me."

"It suits you," he said, simply; "and I should not think there was another name in the world that would. I wonder," he added, with a shy laugh, "if you would like my name? It is Lancelot Chandos. My friends call me Lance."

"Yes, I like that. I know all the history of Sir Lancelot. I admire him; but I think he was a weak man--do not you?"

"For loving Queen Guinevere? I do not know. Some love is strength, not weakness," he replied.

Leone looked up at him again.

"Are you the son of a great lord?" she asked; "some one told me so."

"Yes; my father is Earl of Lanswell; and people would call him a great earl. He is rich and powerful."

"What has brought you, the son of a great earl, down to Rashleigh?" she asked.

"My own idleness, to begin with," he said. "I have been at Oxford more years than I care to count; and I have idled my time."

"Then you are studying?" she said.

"Yes, that is it. I am trying to make up for lost time. I have some examinations to pass; and my father has sent me down to Dr. Hervey because he is known everywhere as the cleverest coach in England."

A cloud came for just one half minute across the face of the moon; the soft, sweet darkness startled Leone.

"I must go now," she said; "it is not only getting late, but growing dark."

"I shall see you again," he cried, "do promise me."

"Nay, you have little faith in promises," she replied; and he watched her as she vanished from among the alder-trees.

It was an unexpected meeting; and strange and startling consequences soon followed.


CHAPTER IV.


AN INTERESTING TETE-A-TETE.

"Where have you been, Leone?" asks Farmer Noel.

She had begun a new life. It seemed years since she had left him, while he sat in the same place, smoking the same pipe, probably thinking the same thoughts. She came in with the brightness and light of the moon in her face; dew-drops lay on her dark hair, her beautiful face was flushed with the wind, so fair, so gracious, so royal, so brilliant. He looked at her in helpless surprise.

"Where have you been?" he repeated.

She looked at him with a sweet, dreamy smile.

"I have been to the mill-stream." And she added in a lower tone, "I have been to heaven."

It had been heaven to her--this one hour spent with one refined by nature and by habit--a gentleman, a man of taste and education. Her uncle wondered that evening at the light that came on her face, at the cheerful sound of her voice, the smile that came over her lips. She was usually so restless and discontented.

It was a break in her life. She wanted something to interrupt the monotony, and now it had come. She had seen and spoken to not only a very handsome and distinguished man, but a lord, the son of an earl. He had admired her, said her face was like a poem; and the words brought a sweet, musing smile to her face.

When the sun shone in her room the next morning she awoke with a sense of something new and beautiful in her life; it was a pleasure to hear the birds sing; a pleasure to bathe in the clear, cold, fresh water; a pleasure to breathe the sweet, fragrant morning air. There was a half wonder as to whether she could see him again.

The poetical, dramatic instinct of the girl was all awake; she tried to make herself as pretty as she could. She put on a dress of pale pink--a plain print, it is true, but the beautiful head and face rose from it as a flower from its leaves.

She brushed back the rippling hair and placed a crimson rose in its depths. Then she smiled at herself. Was it likely she should see him? What should bring the great son of an earl to the little farm at Rashleigh? But the blue and white pigeons, the little chickens--all fared well that morning. Leone was content.

In the afternoon Farmer Noel wanted her to go down to the hay-fields. The men were busy with the newly mown hay, and he wished her to take some messages about the stacking of it. She looked like a picture of summer as she walked through the green, shady lane, a red rose in her hair and one in her breast, a cluster of woodbine in her hand. She saw nothing of Lord Chandos, yet she thought of nothing else; every tree, every field, every lane she passed she expected to see him; but of course he was not there; and her heart beat fast as she saw him--he was crossing what people called the Brook Meadow--and she met him face to face.

They had met for the first time on a moonlight night; they met for the second time on a sultry summer afternoon, when the whole world seemed full of love. The birds were singing of love in the trees, the butterflies were making love to the flowers, the wind was whispering of love to the trees, the sun was kissing the earth that lay silent in its embrace.

"Leone," he cried; and then he flushed crimson. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but I ought to say Miss Noel; but I have been thinking of you all night as Leone. I did not think of it before I spoke."

She laughed at the long apology.

"Say it all over again," she said. "Begin at 'Good-afternoon, Miss Noel.'"

He repeated it after her, then added:

"I think my kind and good fortune sent me this way. I was longing for some one to speak to--and of all happiness to meet you; but perhaps you are busy."

"No; I have done all that I had to do. I am never busy," she added, with regal calm.

He smiled again.

"No; I could not fancy you busy," he said, "any more than I could fancy the goddess Juno in a hurry. To some fair women there belongs by birthright a calm that is almost divine."

"My calm covers a storm," she replied. "My life has been brief and dull; neither my heart nor my soul has really lived; but I feel in myself a capability of power that sometimes frightens me."

He did not doubt it as he looked at the beautiful, passionate face; it was even more lovely in the gleam of the sunlight than in the soft, sweet light of the moon.

"You cannot stand in the sunshine," he said. "If you are not busy will you go with me through Leigh Woods? I shall remember the way this time."

She hesitated one half minute, and he saw it; he raised his hat and stood bare-headed, waiting for her answer.

"Yes, I will go," she said at length. "Why should I not?"

They went together to Leigh Woods, where the great oak-trees made a pleasant shade, and the ground was a mass of wild flowers; great streams of bluebells that stirred so gently in the wind, violets that hid themselves under their leaves, cowslips like little tips of gold, wild strawberry blossoms that looked like snow-flakes.

How fair it was. The sunbeams fell through the great green boughs, throwing long shadows on the grass. It was a beautiful, silent world, all perfume and light. The