Only a Girl's Love, Charles Garvice [a book to read .txt] 📗

have seen him. Oh, Stella, if you had seen him as I have done!—if you had heard him speak! His voice——"

Stella put up her hand.

"Don't!—Spare me!" she uttered, hoarsely.

"But why—why should it be?" murmured Lilian, clinging to her hand. "Why, Stella, you cannot guess how he loves you? There never was love so deep, so pure, so true as his!"

A faint flush broke over the pale face.

"I know it," she breathed. Then, with a sharp, almost fierce energy, "Have you come to tell me that—me who know him so well? Was it worth while? Do you think I do not know what I have lost?"

"You promised not to be angry with me, Stella."

"Forgive me—I—I scarcely know what I am saying! You did not come for that; what then?"

"To hear from your own lips, Stella, the reason for this. Bear with me, dear! Remember that I am his sister, that I love him with a love only second to yours! That all my life I have loved him, and that my heart is breaking at the sight of[223] his unhappiness. I have come to tell you this—to plead for him—to plead with you for yourself! Do not turn a deaf ear, a cold heart to me, Stella! Do not, do not!" and she clung to the hot hands, and looked up at the white face with tearful, imploring eyes.

"You say you know him; you may do so; but not so well as I, his sister. I know every turn of his nature—am I not of the same flesh and blood? Stella, he is not like other men—quick to change and forget. He will never bend and turn as other men. Stella, you will break his heart!"

Stella turned on her like some tortured animal driven to bay.

"Do I not know it! Is it not this knowledge that is breaking my heart—that has already broken it?" she retorted wildly. "Do you think I am sorrowing for myself alone? Do you think me so mean, so selfish? Listen, Lady Lilian, if—if this separation were to bring him happiness I could have borne it with a smile. If you could come to me and say, 'He will forget you and his love in a week—a month—a year!' I would welcome you as one who brings me consolation and hope. Who am I that I should think of myself alone?—I, the miserable, insignificant girl whom he condescended to bless with his love! I am—nothing! Nothing save what his love made me. If my life could have purchased his happiness I would have given it. Lady Lilian you do not know me——"

The tempest of her passion overawed the other weak and trembling girl.

"You love him so!" she murmured.

Stella looked at her with a smile.

"I love him," she said, slowly. "I will never say it again, never! I say it to you that you may know and understand how deep and wide is the gulf which stretches between us—so wide that it can never, never be overpassed."

"No, no, you shall not say it."

Stella smiled bitterly.

"I think I know why you have come, Lilian. You think this a mere lovers' quarrel, that a word will set straight. Quarrel! How little you know either him or me. There never could have been a quarrel between us—one cannot quarrel with oneself! His word, his wish were law to me. If he had said 'do this,' I should have done it—if he had said 'go thither,' I should have gone; but once he laid his command on me, and I obeyed. There is nothing I would not have done—nothing, if he had bidden me. I know it now—I know now that I was like a reed in his hands now that I have lost him."

Lilian put her hand upon her lips.

"You shall not say it!" she murmured, hoarsely. "Nothing can part you—nothing can stand against such love! You are right. I never knew what it meant until to-night. Stella, you cannot mean to send him away—you will not let anything save death come between you?"

Stella looked at her with aching eyes that, unlike Lilian's, were dry and tearless.

"Death!" she said, "there are things worse than death——"

[224]

"Stella!"

"Words one cannot mention, lest the winds should catch them up and spread them far and wide. Not even death could have divided us more effectually than we are divided."

Lilian shrank back appalled.

"What is it you say?" she breathed. "Stella, look at me! You will, you must tell me what you mean."

Stella did look at her, with a look that was awful in its calm despair.

"I was silent when he bade me speak; do you think that I can open my lips to you?"

Lilian hid her face in her hand, tremblingly.

"Oh, what is it?—what is it?" she murmured.

There was silence for a moment, then Stella laid her hand on Lilian's arm.

"Listen," she said, solemnly. "I will tell you this much, that you may understand how hopeless is the task which you have undertaken. If—if I were to yield, if I were to say to him 'Come back! I am yours, take me!' you—you, who plead so that my heart aches at your words—would, in the coming time, when the storm broke and the cost of my yielding had to be paid—you would be the first to say that I had done wrong, weakly, selfishly. You would be the first, because you are a woman, and know that it is a woman's duty to sacrifice herself for those she loves! Have I made it plain?"

Lilian raised her head and looked at her, and her face went white.

"Is—is that true?"

"It is so true, that if I were to tell you what separates us, you would go without a word; no! you would utter that word in a prayer that I might remain as firm and unyielding as I am!"

So utterly hopeless were the words, the voice, that they smote on the gentle heart with the force of conviction. She was silent for a moment, then, with a sob, she held out her arms.

"Oh, my dear, my dear! Stella, Stella!" she sobbed.

Stella looked at her for a moment, then she bent and kissed her.

"Do not cry," she murmured, no tear in her own eye. "I can not cry, I feel as if I shall never shed another tear! Go now go!" and she put her arm round her.

Lilian rose trembling, and leant upon her, looking up into her face.

"My poor Stella!" she murmured. "He—he called you noble; I know now what he meant! I think I understand—I am not sure, even now; but I think, and—and, yes, I will say it, I feel that you are right. But, oh, my dear, my dear!"

"Hush! hush!" breathed Stella, painfully. "Do not pity me——"

"Pity! It is a poor, a miserable word between us. I love, I honor you, Stella!" and she put her arm round Stella's neck. "Kiss me, dear, once!"

Stella bent and kissed her.

[225]

"Once—and for the last time," she said, in a low voice. "Henceforth we must be strangers."

"Not that, Stella; that is impossible, knowing what we do!"

"Yes, it must be," was the low, calm response. "I could not bear it. There must be nothing to remind me of—him," and her lips quivered.

Lilian's head drooped.

"Oh, my poor boy!" she moaned. "Stella," she said, in a pleading whisper, "give me one word to comfort him—one word?"

Stella turned her eyes upon her; they had reached the gate, the carriage was in sight.

"There is no word that I can send," she said, almost inaudibly. "No word but this—that nothing he can do can save us, that any effort will but add to my misery, and that I pray we may never meet again."

"I cannot tell him that! Not that, Stella!"

"It is the best wish I can have," said Stella, "I do wish it—for myself, and for him. I pray that we never meet again."

Lilian clung to her to the last, even when she had entered the carriage, and to the last there was no tear in the dark sorrowful eyes. White and weary she stood, looking out into the night, worn out and exhausted by the struggle and the storm of pent-up emotion, but fixed and immovable as only a woman can be when she has resolved on self-sacrifice.

A few minutes later, Lilian stood on the threshold of Leycester's room. She had knocked twice, scarcely daring to use her voice, but at last she spoke his name, and he opened the door.

"Lilian!" he said, and he took her in his arms.

"Shut the door," she breathed.

Then she sank on to his breast and looked up at him, all her love and devotion in her sorrowful eyes.

"Oh, my poor darling," she murmured.

He started and drew her to the light.

"What is it! Where have you been?" he asked, and there was a faint sound of hope in his voice, a faint light in his haggard face, as she whispered—

"I have seen her!"

"Seen her—Stella?"

And his voice quivered on the name.

"Yes. Oh, Ley! Ley!"

His face blanched.

"Well!" he said, hoarsely.

"Ley, my poor Ley! there is no hope."

His grasp tightened on her arm.

"No hope!" he echoed wearily.

She shook her head.

"Ley, I do not wonder at you loving her! She is the type of all that is beautiful and noble——"

"You—you torture me!" he said, brokenly.

"So good and true and noble," she continued, sobbing; "and because she is all this and more you must learn to bear it, Ley!"

[226]

He smiled bitterly.

"You must bear it, Ley; even as she bears it——"

"Tell me what it is," he broke in, hoarsely. "Give me something tangible to grapple with, and—well, then talk to me of bearing it!"

"I cannot—she cannot," she replied, earnestly, solemnly. "Even to me, heart to heart, she could not open her lips. Ley! Fate is against you—you and her. There is no hope, no hope! I feel it; I who would not have believed it, did not believe it even from you! There is no hope, Ley!"

He let her sink into a chair and stood beside her, a look on his face that was not good to see.

"Is there not?" he said, in a low voice. "You have appealed to her. There is still one other to appeal to; I shall seek him."

She looked up, not with alarm but with solemn conviction.

"Do not," she said, "unless you wish to add to her sorrow! No, Ley, if you strike at him, the blow must reach her."

"She told you that?"

"Yes; by word, by look. No, Ley, there is no hope there. You cannot reach him except through her, and you will spare her that. 'Tell him,' she said, 'that any effort he makes will add to my misery. Tell him that I pray we may never meet again.'" She paused a moment. "Ley, I know no more of the cause than you, but I know this, that she is right."

He stood looking down at her, his face working, then at last he answered:

"You are a brave girl, Lil," he said. "You must go now; even you cannot help me to bear this. 'Pray that we may never meet again,' and this was to have been our marriage day!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

I have carefully avoided describing Lord Leycester Wyndward as a "good" man. If to be generous, single-minded, impatient of wrong and pitiful of the wronged; if to be blessed, cursed with the capacity for loving madly and passionately; if to be without fear, either moral or physical, be heroic, then he was a hero; but I am afraid it cannot be said that he was "good."

Before many weeks had elapsed since his parting with Stella, the world had decided that he was indeed very bad. It is scarcely too much to say that his name was the red rag which was flourished in the eyes of those righteous, indignant bulls whose mission in life it is to talk over their fellow-creatures' ill deeds and worry them.

One mad exploit after another was connected with his name, and it soon came to pass that no desperate thing was done within the circle of the higher class, but he was credited with being the ringleader, or at least with having a hand in it.

It was said that at that select and notorious club, "The Rookery," Lord Leycester was the most desperate of gamblers and persistent of losers. Rumor went so far as to declare that even the Wyndward estates could not stand the inroads which his[227] losses at the gaming table were making. It was rumored, and not contradicted, that he had "plunged" on the turf, and that his stud was one of the largest and most expensive in England.

The society papers were full of insinuating paragraphs hinting at the wildness of his career, and prophesying its speedy