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

the world-famous view from the Piazza at Nice. The sun was dropping into the horizon like a huge ball of crimson fire, the opal tints of the sky stretched far above their heads and even behind them. It was one blaze of glory in which a slim, girlish figure, leaning far back in the seat, seemed bathed.

She was pale still, was this Stella, this little girl heroine of ours, but the dark look of trouble and leaden sorrow had gone, and the light of youth and youthful joy had come back to the dark eyes; the faint, ever ready smile hovered again about the red, mobile lips. "Sorrow" says Goethe, "is the refining touch to a woman's beauty," and it refined Stella's. She was lovely now, with that soft, ethereal loveliness which poets sing of, and artists paint, and we poor penman so vainly strive to describe.

She looked up with a smile.

"Homesick, uncle?" she murmurs.

The old man strokes his beard, and glances at her.

"I plead guilty," he says. "You cannot make a hermit crab happy if you take him out of his shell, and the cottage is my shell, Stella."

She sighed softly, not with unhappiness, but with that tender reflectiveness which women alone possess.

"I will go back when you please, dear," she says.

"Hem!" he grunts. "There is someone else to consult, mademoiselle; that someone else seems particularly satisfied to remain where we are; but then I suppose he would be contented to remain anywhere so that a certain pale-faced, insignificant chit of a girl were near him."

A faint blush, a happy flush spreads over the pale face, and the long lashes droop over the dark eyes.

"At any rate we must ask him," says the old man; "we owe him that little attention at least, seeing how much long-suffering patience he has and continues to display."

"Don't, uncle," murmurs the half-parted lips.

"It is all very well to say 'don't,'" retorts the old man with a grim smile. "Seriously, don't you think that you are, to use an Americanism, playing it rather low down on the poor fellow?"

"I—I—don't know what you mean," she falters.

"Permit me to explain then," he says, ironically.

"I—I don't want to hear, dear."

[283]

"It is fitting that girls should be made to hear sometimes," he says, with a smile. "What I mean is simply this, that, as a man with something approaching a conscience and a fellow feeling for my kind, I feel it my duty to point out to you that, perhaps unconsciously, you are leading Leycester the sort of life that the bear who dances on hot bricks—if any bear ever does—is supposed to lead. Here for months, after no end of suffering——"

"I have suffered too," she murmurs.

"Exactly," he assents, in his gently-grim way; "but that only makes it worse. After months of suffering, you allow him to dangle at your heels, you drag him at your chariot wheels, tied him at your apron strings from France to Italy, from Italy to Switzerland, from Switzerland back to France again, and gave him no more encouragement than a cat does a dog."

The faint flush is a burning crimson now.

"He—he need not come," she murmurs, panting. "He is not obliged."

"The moth—the infuriated moth, is not obliged to hover about the candle, but he does hover, and generally winds up by scorching his wings. I admit that it is foolish and unreasonable, but it is none the less true that Leycester is simply incapable, apparently, of resting outside the radius of your presence, and therefore I say hadn't you better give him the right to remain within that radius and——"

She put up her hand to stop him, her face a deeper crimson still.

"Permit me," he says, obstinately, and puffing at his pipe to emphasize. "Once more the unfortunate wretch is on tenterhooks; he is dying to take possession of you, and afraid to speak up like a man because, possibly, you have had a little illness——"

"Oh, uncle, and you said yourself that you thought I should have died."

He coughs.

"Ahem! One is inclined to exaggerate sometimes. He is afraid to speak because in his utter sensitiveness he will insist upon considering you an invalid still, whereas you are about as strong and healthy now as, to use another Americanism, 'they make 'em.' Now, Stella, if you mean to marry him, say so; if you don't mean to, say so, and for goodness sake let the unfortunate monomaniac go."

"Leycester is not a monomaniac, uncle," she retorts, in a low, indignant voice.

"Yes, he is," he says, "he is possessed by a mania for a little chit of a girl with a pale face and dark eyes and a nose that is nothing to speak of. If he wasn't an utterly lost maniac he would have refused to dangle at your heels any longer, and gone off to someone with some pretension to a regular facial outline." He stops, for there comes the sound of a firm, manly tread upon the smooth gravel path, and the next instant Leycester's tall figure is beside them.

He bends over the slight, slim, graceful figure, a loving, reverential devotion in his handsome face, a faint anxiety in his[284] eyes and in his voice as he says, in that low, musical undertone which has charmed so many women's ears:

"Have you no wrap on, Stella? These evenings are very beautiful but treacherous."

"There isn't a breath of air," says Stella, with a little laugh.

"Yes, yes!" he says, and puts his hand on the arm that rests on the seat, "you must be careful, indeed you must, my darling, I will go and get you a——"

"Blanket and a suit of sables," broke in the old man, with good humorous banter. "Allow me, I am young and full of energy, and you are old and wasted and wearied, watching over a sick and perhaps dying girl, who eats three huge meals a day, and can outwalk Weston. I will go," and he goes and leaves them, Stella's soft laughter following him like music.

Leycester stands beside her looking down at her in silence. For him that rustic seat holds all that is good and worth having in life, and as he looks, the passionate love that burns so steadily in his heart glows in his eyes.

For weeks, for months he has watched her—watched her patiently as now—watched her from the shadow of death, into the world of life; and though his eyes and the tone of his voice have spoken love often and often, he has so tutored his lips as to refrain from open speech. He knows the full measure of the shock which had struck her down, and in his great reverence and unfathomable love for her, he has restrained himself, fearing that a word might bring back that terrible past. But now, to-night, as he sees the faint color tinting the clear cheeks—sees the sunset light reflected in her bright eyes—his heart begins to beat with that throb which tells of long-suppressed passion clamoring for expression.

Maiden-like, she feels something of what is passing through his mind, and a great shyness falls upon her. She can almost hear her heart beat.

"Won't you sit down?" she says, at last, in that little, low, murmuring voice, which is such sweet music in his ears. And she moves her dress to make room for him.

He comes round, and sinks in the seat beside her.

"Can you not feel the breeze now?" he asks. "I wish I had brought a wrap with me, on the chance of your having forgotten it."

She looks round at him, with laughter in her eyes and on her lips.

"Did you not hear what uncle said?" She asks. "Don't you know that he was laughing, actually laughing at me? When will you begin to believe that I am well and strong and ridiculously robust? Don't you see that the people at the hotel are quite amused with your solicitude respecting my delicate state of health?"

"I don't care anything about the people at the hotel," he says, in that frank, simple way which speaks so plainly of his love. "I know that I don't mean you to catch cold if I can help it!"

"You—you are very good to me," she says, and there is a slight tremor in her voice.

[285]

He laughs his old short, curt laugh, softened in a singular way.

"Am I? You might say that a man was particularly 'good' because he showed some concern for the safety of a particularly precious stone!"

Her eyes droop, and, perhaps unconsciously, her arm draws a little nearer to him.

"You are good," she says, "but I am not a precious stone, by any means."

"You are all that is rare and precious to me, my darling," he says; "you are all the world to me. Stella!—--" he stops, alarmed lest he should be alarming her, but his arm slides round her, and he ventures to draw her nearer to him.

It is the only embrace he has ventured to give her since that night when she fell into his arms at the cottage door at Carlyon, and he half fears that she will shrink from him in the new strange shyness that has fallen upon her; but she does not, instead she lets her head droop until it rests upon his breast, and the strong man's passion leaps full force and masterful in a moment.

"Stella!" he murmurs, his lips pressed to hers, which do not swerve, "may I speak? Will you let me? You will not be angry?"

She does not look angry; her eyes fixed on his have nothing but submissive love in them.

"I have waited,—it seems so long—because I was afraid to trouble you, but I may speak now, Stella?" and he draws her closer to him. "Will you be my wife—soon—soon?"

He waits, his handsome face eloquent in its entreaty and anxiety, and she leans back and looks up at him, then her gaze falters. A little quiver hovers on her lips, and the dark eyes droop.

Is it "Yes"? If so, he alone could have heard it.

"My poor darling!" he murmurs, and he takes her face in his hands and turns it up to him. "Oh, my darling, If you knew how I loved you—how anxiously I have waited! And it shall be soon, Stella! My little wife! My very own!"

"Yes!" she said, and, as in the old time, she raises herself in his arms and kisses him.

"And—and the countess, and all of them!" she murmurs, but with a little quaint smile.

He smiles calmly. "Not to-night, darling, do not let us talk of the outside world to-night. But see if 'all of them,' as you put it, are not exactly of one mind; one of them is," and he takes out a letter from his pocket.

"From Lilian!" she says, guessing instinctively.

Leycester nods.

"Yes, take it and read; you will find your name in every line. Stella, it was this letter that gave me courage to speak to you to-night. A woman knows a woman after all—you will read what she says. 'Are you still afraid, Ley,' she writes, 'ask her!' and I have asked. And now all the past will be buried[286] and we shall be happy at last. At last, Stella, where—where shall it be?"

She is silent, but she lifts the letter to her lips and kisses it.

"What do you say to Paris?" he asks.

"Paris!" she echoes, flushing.

"Yes," he says, "I have been talking to the old doctor, and he thinks you are strong enough to have a little excitement now, and thinks that a tour in Paris would be the very thing to complete things. What do you say," he goes on, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact voice, but watching her with eager eyes, "if we start at the end of the week, that will give you time to make your preparations, won't it?"

"Oh, no, no——!"

"Then say the beginning of next," he returns, magnanimously, "and we will be married about Wednesday"—she utters a faint exclamation, and turns pale and red by turns, but he is steadfast—"and then we can have a gay time of it before we settle down."

"Settle down," she says, with a little longing sigh. "How sweet it sounds—but next week!"

"It is a cruel time to wait," he declares, drawing her nearer to him, "cruel—next week! It is months, years, ages——"

"Hush!" she says, struggling gently away from him, "here is uncle."

It is uncle, but he is innocent of wraps.

"Going to stay out all night?" he asks, with fine irony.

"Why, where are the wraps?" demands Leycester.

"Eh? Oh, nonsense!" says the old man. "Do you want to commit suicide together by suffocation? It's as warm as an oven. Oh, for my little garden, and the cool room."

"You shall have it in a week or two," says Leycester, with a smile of ineffable satisfaction. "We are going to take you to Paris, and then will come and stay with you——"

"Oh, will