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

and learned to love each other.

One evening, as they sat by their favorite spot--the mill-stream--Lord Chandos told her how he had learned to love her, how he had ceased to think of anything in the world but herself.

"I knew you were my fate, Leone," he said, "when I saw you sitting here by the mill-stream. I am quite sure that I have loved you ever since. I do not remember that there has been one moment in which I have not thought of you. I shall always thank Heaven that I came to Rashleigh--I found my darling here."

For once all the pride had died from her face; all the hauteur was gone from her eyes; a lovely gleam of tenderness took its place; a love-light in the shy, sweet eyes that dropped from his.

"My darling Leone," he said, "if I lived a hundred years I could only say over and over again--'I love you.' Those three words say everything. Do you love me?"

She looked up at him. Then she raised her dark eyes to his and a little quiver passed over her beautiful mouth.

"Yes, I love you," she said. "Whether it be for weal or for woe, for good or ill, I know not; but I love you."

There was unutterable pathos, unutterable music in those three words; they seemed to rhyme with the chime of the falling waters. She held out her white hands, he clasped them in his.

"Why do you say it so sadly, my darling? Love will bring nothing but happiness for you and for me," he said.

She laid her white arms on his neck, and looked earnestly in his face.

"There can be no comparison," she said. "Love to you is only a small part of your life, to me it is everything--everything. Do you understand? If you forget me or anything of that kind, I could not bear it. I could not school myself into patience as model women do. I should come and throw myself into the mill-stream."

"But, my darling, I shall never forget you--never; you are life of my life. I might live without the air and the sunlight; I might live without sleep or food, but never without you. I must forget my own soul before I forget you."

Still the white hands clasped his shoulders and the dark eyes were fixed on his face.

"You and your love are more than that to me," she said. "I throw all my life on this one die; I have nothing else--no other hope. Ah, think well, Lance, before you pledge your faith to me; it means so much. I should exact it whole, unbroken and forever."

"And I would give it so," he replied.

"Think well of it," she said again, with those dark, earnest eyes fixed on his face. "Let there be no mistake, Lance. I am not one of the meek Griselda type; I should not suffer in silence and resignation, let my heart break, and then in silence sink into an early grave. Ah, no, I am no patient Griselda. I should look for revenge and many other things. Think well before you pledge yourself to me. I should never forgive--never forget. There is time now--think before you seal your fate and mine."

"I need not think, Leone," he answered, quietly. "I have thought, and the result is that I pledge you my faith forever and ever."

The earnest, eager gaze died from her eyes, and the beautiful face was hidden on his breast.

"Forever and ever, sweet," he whispered; "do you hear? in all time and for all eternity, I pledge you my love and my faith."

The water seemed to laugh as it rippled on, the wind laughed as it bent the tall branches, the nightingale singing in the wood stopped suddenly, and its next burst of song was like ringing laughter; the mountains quivered over the mill-stream, the stars seemed to tremble as they shone.

"Forever and ever," he repeated. The wind seemed to catch up the words and repeat them, the leaves seemed to murmur them, the fall of the water to rhyme with them. "Forever and ever, sweet, I pledge you my love and my faith; our hearts will be one, and our souls one, and you will give me the same love in return, my sweet?"

"I give you even more than that," she replied, so earnestly that the words had a ring of tragedy in them; and then bending forward, he kissed the sweet lips that were for evermore to be his own.

"You are mine now forever," he said, "my wife, who is to be."

She was quite silent for some minutes; then, looking up at him, she said:

"I wish you had never sung that pretty ballad of the mill-wheel to me; do you know what the water always says when I listen?


"'Those vows are all forgotten,
The ring asunder broken.'"


"My darling," he said, clasping her to his heart, "no words that have any ring of doubt in them will ever apply to us, let the mill-stream say what it will."


CHAPTER VI.


AN IMPATIENT LOVER'S PLANS.

There had been no mistake about the wooing of Lord Chandos. He had not thought of loving and riding away; the proud, beautiful, gifted girl whom he loved had been wooed and pursued with the ardor and respect that he would have shown to a princess.

There came another day, when something had prevented him from seeing her; and unable to control his impatience, he had ridden over to the farm, this time ostensibly to see the farmer, and ask for another glass of his famous cider; this time, under the farmer's eyes even, he stopped and spoke to Leone.

"You will be at the mill-stream this evening?" he whispered, and her answer was:

"Yes."

When he had drunk the cider and ridden away, Farmer Noel turned to his niece.

"A fine young man that, Leone; but what did he say to you?"

"Nothing particular; something about the mill-stream," replied the proud lips, that disdained a lie.

"Because," said Robert Noel, slowly, "you have a beautiful face of your own, my lady lass, and a young man like that would be sure to admire it."

"What matter if he did, uncle?" she asked.

"Harm would come of it," replied the farmer; "what a man admires he often loves; and no good would come of such a love as that."

"Why not?" she asked again, with flushed face and flashing eyes. "Why not?"

"We reckon in these parts," said the farmer, slowly, "that there is too great a difference between the aristocracy and the working-people. To put it in plain words, my lady lass, when a great lord or a rich man admires a poor lass, as a rule it ends in her disgrace."

"Not always," she answered, proudly.

"No, perhaps not always; but mostly, mostly," repeated Robert Noel. "You have a beautiful face, and, if you are wise, you will keep out of that young gentleman's way. I should not like to offend you, Leone; you will excuse me for speaking plainly."

"It does not offend me," she said, simply; "although I do not think that you are right. Why should not a lord, great and rich as this one, marry a girl who has no drawback but poverty? I do not see such a great difference."

"I cannot tell you, my lady lass, either the why or the wherefore," he replied. "I know that rich men do not marry poor and obscure girls; and if they do, there is sure to be something wrong with the marriage. We will not talk about it, only if he seems to admire you at all, do you keep out of that young man's way."

She made him no answer; his care for her touched her, but then there was no need. Lord Chandos was unlike other men; besides which he loved her so well he could not live without her.

So, when the sun was setting in the western sky, she went down to the mill-stream, where her lover awaited her.

The crimson clouds were reflected in the rippling water, the birds were singing in the trees, the flowers were all falling asleep; the fair, fragrant world was getting ready for its time of rest.

"Leone," he cried, seizing her hands and drawing her toward him, "my darling, I thought to-day would never come. How many hours did yesterday hold?"

"Twenty-four," she replied.

"Only twenty-four? Why, it seemed to me it was a day as long as a year, and I asked myself one question, sweet."

"What was it, Lance?"

"This: that if one day seemed so terribly long, what would become of me if I had to pass a week without you?"

"What would become of you?" she said, laughingly.

"I should die of my own impatience," he said, his handsome young face flushing. "Fate may try me as it will," he added, "but it must never separate me from you. It is because I have found this out that I have asked you to meet me here to-night. I cannot live without you, Leone; you understand that the hours are long and dark; life seems all ended, I cannot feel interest or energy; I am longing for you all the time, just as thirsty flowers are longing for dew. Leone, I should long until the fever of my own longing killed me--for you."

He drew the beautiful face to his own, and kissed it with a passion words could never tell.

"Why should I not be happy in my own way?" he said. "If I want the one only thing on earth that could bring me my happiness, why should I not have it? Of what use is money, wealth, position, rank, anything else on earth to me, unless I have you. I would rather lose all I have in the world than lose you."

"It is sweet to be loved so well," she said, with a sigh.

"I have had letters from home to-day," he said, "and I--I am half afraid to tell you lest you should say no. I am to leave Rashleigh in one month from now, and to go to my father's house--Cawdor, it is called. Leone, I cannot go alone."

She looked at him with wondering eyes; the ardent young lover who believed his love to be so great and so generous, yet who, in reality, loved himself best, even in his love.

"Darling, I want you to consent to be my wife before I leave Rashleigh," he continued. "I know it will be the best and easiest plan if I can but win your consent."

Her loving heart seemed almost to stand still; the crimson clouds and the rippling waters seemed to meet; even in her dreams she had never imagined herself his wife.

Lord Chandos continued:

"I know my parents well; my father is inflexible on some points, but easily influenced; my mother is, I believe, the proudest woman in the wide world. I know that she expects something wonderful from me in the way of marriage; I hardly think that there is a peeress in England that my mother would deem too good for me, and it would wound her to the heart should I marry a woman beneath me in rank. Indeed I know she would never forgive me."

She uttered a little, low cry.

"Then why have you loved me?"