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

arms, he carried him in to an adjoining room.

Lord Charles followed with a glass of water, but Leycester put it aside with the one word—

"Brandy."

Lord Charles brought some brandy and closed the door, the others standing outside aghast and frightened. Leycester poured some of the spirit through his closed teeth, and the boy came back to life—to what was left for him of life—and smiled up at him.

"The room was hot, Bell," said Leycester, in his gentle way; he could be gentle even now. "I wanted you to go home two—three—hours ago! Why didn't you go?"

"You—stayed——" gasped the boy.

Leicester's lips twitched.

"I!" he said. "That is a different matter."

The boy's head drooped, and fell back on Leycester's arm.

"Tell them not to stop the game," he said; "let somebody play for me!" then he went off again.

The doctor came, a fashionable, hardworked man, a friend both of Leycester's and Guildford's, and bent over the lad as he lay.

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"It's a faint," said Lord Charles, nervously; "nothing else, eh, doctor?"

The doctor looked up.

"My brougham is outside," he said. "I will take him home."

Leycester nodded, and carried the slight frame through the hall and placed it in the brougham. The doctor followed. The cool air revived the boy, and he made an effort to sit up, looking round as if in search of something; at last his wandering sight fell on Leycester's, and he smiled.

"That's right, Bell!" said Leycester; "you will be well to-morrow; but mind, no more of this!" and he took the small white hand.

The heir to a marquisate clung to the hand, and smiled again.

"No, there will be no more of it, Leycester," he breathed, painfully. "There will be no more of anything for me; I have seen the last of the Rookery—and of you all. Leycester, I am dying!"

Leycester forced a smile to his white face.

"Nonsense, Bell," he said.

The boy raised a weak, trembling finger, and pointed to the doctor's face.

"Look at him," he said. "He never told a lie in his—life. Ask him."

"Tell them to drive on, my lord," said the doctor.

The boy laughed, an awful laugh; then his face changed, and even as the brougham moved on, he clung to Leycester's hand, and bending forward, panted:

"Leycester—good-bye!"

Leycester stood, white and motionless as a statue, for the space of a minute; then he turned to Lord Charles, who stood biting his pale lips and looking after the brougham.

"I will go with you to-morrow," he said, hoarsely.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Time—which Lord Leycester had been so recklessly wasting in "riotous living"—passed very quiet indeed in the Thames valley, beneath the white walls of Wyndward Hall.

During the months which elapsed since that fearful parting between the two lovers, life had gone on at the cottage just as before, with the one great exception that Jasper Adelstone had become almost a daily visitor, and that Stella was engaged to him.

That was all the difference, but what a difference it was!

Lord Leycester gone—her tried, her first lover, the man who had won her maiden heart—and in his place this man whom she—hated.

But yet she fought the battle womanfully. She had made a bargain—she had sacrificed herself for her two loved ones, had given herself freely and unreservedly, and she strove to carry out her part of the compact.

She looked a little pale, a little graver than of old, but there was no querulous tone of complaint about her; if she[233] did not laugh the frank, light-hearted laugh that her uncle used to declare was like the "voice of sunlight," she smiled sometimes; and if the smile was rather sad than mirthful, it was very sweet.

The old man noticed nothing amiss; he thought she had grown quieter, but set the change down to her betrothal; he went on painting, absorbed in his work, scarcely heeding the world that ran by him so merrily, so sadly, and was quite content. Jasper's quiet, low-toned voice did not disturb him, and he would go on painting while they were talking near him, dead to their presence. Since that last blow his boy's crime had struck him, he had lived more entirely and completely in his art than ever.

Of the two, Frank and Stella, perhaps it was Frank who seemed the most changed. He had grown thinner and paler, and more girlish and delicate-looking than ever.

It had been arranged that he should go up to the university for the next term, but Mr. Hamilton, the old doctor, who had been called in to see to a slight cough which the boy had started, had hummed and hawed, and advised that the 'varsity should be shelved for the present.

"Was he ill?" Stella had asked, anxiously—very anxiously, for, woman-like, she had grown to love with a passionate devotion the boy for whom she had sacrificed herself.

"N—o; not ill," the old doctor had said. "Certainly not ill," and he went on to explain that Frank was delicate—that all boys with fair hair and fair complexions were more or less delicate.

"But he has such a beautiful color," said Stella, nervously.

"Y—es; a nice color," said the old man, and that was all she could get out of him.

But the cough did not go; and as the Autumn mists stole up from the river and covered the meadows with a filmy veil, beautiful to behold, the cough got worse; but the beautiful color did not go either, and so Stella was not very anxious.

As for Frank himself, he treated his ailments with supreme indifference.

"Do I take any medicine?" he said, in answer to Stella's questioning. "Yes, I take all the old woman—I beg his pardon!—the doctor sends. It isn't very unpleasant, and though it doesn't do me much good apparently, it seems to afford you and the aforesaid old woman some satisfaction, and so we are pleased all round."

"You don't seem to take any interest in things, Frank," said Stella, one morning, when she had come into the garden to look at the trees that drew a long line of gold and brown and yellow along the river bank, and had found him leaning on the gate, his hands clasped before him, his eyes fixed on the Hall, very much as she had first seen him, the night he had come home.

He looked round at her and smiled faintly.

"Why don't you go and try the fish?" she said. "Or—or—go for a ride? You only wander about the gardens or in the meadows."

[234]

He looked at her curiously.

"Why do not you?" he said, slowly, his large blue eyes fixed on her face, which grew slowly blush-red under his regard. "You do not seem to take much interest in things, Stel. You don't go and fish, or—or—take a drive, or anything. You only wander about the garden, or in the meadows."

The long lashes swept her cheeks, and she struggled with a sigh. His words had told home.

"But—but," she said falteringly, "I am not a boy. Girls should stay at home and attend to their duties."

"And walk and move as if they were in a dream—as if their hearts and souls were divorced from their bodies—and miles, miles away," he said, waving his thin white hand in the air slowly.

Her lips quivered, and she turned her face away, but only for a moment; it was back upon him with a smile again.

"You are a foolish, fanciful boy!" she said, putting her hand on his shoulder and caressing his cheek.

"Perhaps so," he said. "'My fancies are more than all the world to me,' says the poet, you know," he added, bitterly.

Stella's heart ached.

"Are you angry with me, Frank?" she said. "Don't be!"

He shook his head.

"No, not angry," he said, looking out at the mist that was rising.

She smothered a sigh; she understood his reproach; not a moment of the day but he accused her in his heart of betraying Lord Leycester; if he could but have known why she had done it; but that he never would know!

"You are a fanciful boy," she said, with a forced lightness. "What are you dreaming about now, I wonder?"

"I was wondering too," he answered, without looking at her, "I was wondering—shall I tell you——"

She answered "yes," with her hand against his cheek.

"I was wondering where Lord Leycester was, and how——"

Her hand dropped to her side and pressed her heart; the sudden mention of the name had struck her like a blow.

He glanced round.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "I forgot; his name was never to be mentioned, was it? I will not sin again—in word. In thought—one can't help one's thoughts, Stel!"

"No," she murmured, almost inaudibly.

"Thoughts are free," he said; "mine are not, however; they are always flying after him—after him, the best and noblest of men, the man who saved my life. You see, though I may not speak of him, it would be ungrateful to forget him!"

"Frank!"

At her tone of piteous supplication and almost reproach, he turned and put his hand on her arm.

"Forgive me, Stel! I didn't mean to hurt you, but—but—well it is so hard to understand, so hard to bear! To feel, to know that he is far away and suffering, while that man, Jasper Adelstone—I beg your pardon, Stel! There! I will say no more!"

[235]

"Do not," she murmured, her face white and strained, but resigned—"do not. Besides, you are wrong; he has forgotten by this time."

He turned and looked at her with a sudden anger; then he smiled as the exquisite beauty of her face smote him.

"You wrong him and yourself. No, Stel, men do not forget such a girl as you——"

"No more!" she said, almost in a tone of command.

He shook his head, and the cough came on and silenced him.

She put her arm round his neck.

"That cough," she said. "You must go in, dear! Look at the mist. Come, come in!"

He turned in silence and walked beside her for a few steps. Then he said tremulously:

"Stella, let me ask one question, and then I will be silent—for always."

"Well?" she said.

"Have you heard from him?—do you know where he is?"

She paused a moment to control her voice, then she said:

"I have heard no word; I do not know whether he is alive or dead."

He sighed and his head dropped upon his breast.

"Let us go in," he said, then he started, for his ears, particularly sharp, had caught the sound of a well-known footstep.

"There is—Jasper," he said, with a pause before the name, and he drew his arm away and walked away from her. Stella turned with a strange set smile on her face, the set smile which she had learnt to greet him with.

He came up the path with his quick and peculiar suppressed step, his hand outstretched. He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her—if he had dared. But he could not. With all his determination and resolution he dared not. There was something, some mysterious halo about his victim which kept him almost at arm's length; it was as if she had surrounded herself by a magic circle which he could not pass.

He took her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it, his eyes drinking in her beauty and grace with a thirsty wistfulness.

"My darling," he murmured, in his soft, low voice, "out so late. Will you not catch cold?"

"No," she said, and like her smile her voice seemed set and tutored. "I shall not catch cold, I never do under any circumstance. But I have just sent Frank in, he has been coughing terribly—he does not seem at all strong."

He frowned with swift impatience.

"Frank is all right," he said, and there was a touch of jealousy in his voice. "Are you not unduly anxious about the boy—you alarm yourself without cause."

"Alarm myself," she repeated, ready to be alarmed at the suggestion. "I—don't think, I hope I am not alarmed. Why should I be?" she said, anxiously.

The jealousy grew more pronounced.

"There is no reason whatever," he said, shortly. "The boy[236] is all right. He has been getting his feet wet and caught cold, that is all."

Stella smiled.

"Yes, that is all," she said, "of course. But it is strange Dr. Hamilton doesn't get rid of it for him."

"Perhaps he doesn't help the doctor," he retorted. "Boys always are careless about themselves. But don't let Frank absorb all the conversation," he said. "Let us talk of ourselves," and he kissed her hand again.

"Yes," said Stella, obediently.

He kept her hand in his and pressed it.

"I have come to speak to you to-night, Stella, about ourselves, darling. I want you to be very good to me!"

She looked forward at the lighted room with the same set expression, waiting patiently, obediently, for him to proceed. There was no response in her touch or in her face. He noticed it—he never failed to notice it, and