A woman's soul E-Book

Charles Garvice

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

“Good-night! Good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good-night till it be morrow!”
The speaker was a young girl, who stood in the middle of the room, her hands clasped, her head bent forward, her eyes fixed in a dreamy rapture, and the remark was addressed to—no one.
She paused, sighed a little—not from impatience, but with a wistful dissatisfaction—and absently moved to the window, through which the last rays of the June sun were flickering redly.
She stood there for a moment or two, then began to pace the room with a lithe, undulating grace. It was a pity that she was alone, because such beauty and grace were wasted on the desert air of the rather grim and dingy room. It was a pity that Sir John Everett Millais, or Mr. Edwin Long, or some other of the great portrait painters were not present to transfer her beauty of face and form, for it was a loveliness of no common order.
Many a poet’s pen had attempted to describe Doris Marlowe, but it may safely be said that not one had succeeded; and not even a great portrait painter could have depicted the mobility of her clear, oval face, and its dark eyes and sensitive lips—eyes and lips so full of expression that people were sometimes almost convinced that she had spoken before she had uttered a word.

Leseprobe

A Woman’s Soul

BY

CHARLES GARVICE

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385747886

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. BEHIND THE FOOTLIGHTS.CHAPTER II. OVER THE FENCE.CHAPTER III. “IF I SHOULD FAIL.”CHAPTER IV. AT THE TOWERS.CHAPTER V. AN IDEAL JULIET.CHAPTER VI. A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.CHAPTER VII. A RARE DIAMOND.CHAPTER VIII. SPENSER CHURCHILL.CHAPTER IX. A SECRET COMPACT.CHAPTER X. FOR HIM ALONE.CHAPTER XI. LOVE’S SUBTLE SPELL.CHAPTER XII. TO WED AN ACTRESS.CHAPTER XIII. AN ACCEPTED OFFER.CHAPTER XIV. A BROKEN TRYST.CHAPTER XV. A TERRIBLE THREAT.CHAPTER XVI. THE PART OF A HYPOCRITE.CHAPTER XVII. A CHANCE FOR ESCAPE.CHAPTER XVIII. FASHIONING THE WEB.CHAPTER XIX. IN STRANGE SURROUNDINGS.CHAPTER XX. AN EXTRAORDINARY PROPOSAL.CHAPTER XXI. AN ART PATRON.CHAPTER XXII. TWO SONG BIRDS.CHAPTER XXIII. A SAD HOME-COMING.CHAPTER XXIV. IN THE HOUR OF NEED.CHAPTER XXV. AS IN A DREAM.CHAPTER XXVI. NOT LOVE, BUT PITY.CHAPTER XXVII. THE GLASS OF FASHION.CHAPTER XXVIII. ENGAGED.CHAPTER XXIX. WICKED LORD STOYLE.CHAPTER XXX. IN THE TOILS.CHAPTER XXXI. A POSTPONEMENT.CHAPTER XXXII. “I LOVE HIM STILL.”CHAPTER XXXIII. OUT OF THE PAST.CHAPTER XXXIV. “I, TOO, AM FREE.”CHAPTER XXXV. THE APPROACH OF THE SHADOW.CHAPTER XXXVI. CONSPIRATORS.CHAPTER XXXVII. FOILED.CHAPTER XXXVIII. RETRIBUTION.

A WOMAN’S SOUL.

CHAPTER I.

BEHIND THE FOOTLIGHTS.

“Good-night! Good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good-night till it be morrow!”

The speaker was a young girl, who stood in the middle of the room, her hands clasped, her head bent forward, her eyes fixed in a dreamy rapture, and the remark was addressed to—no one.

She paused, sighed a little—not from impatience, but with a wistful dissatisfaction—and absently moved to the window, through which the last rays of the June sun were flickering redly.

She stood there for a moment or two, then began to pace the room with a lithe, undulating grace. It was a pity that she was alone, because such beauty and grace were wasted on the desert air of the rather grim and dingy room. It was a pity that Sir John Everett Millais, or Mr. Edwin Long, or some other of the great portrait painters were not present to transfer her beauty of face and form, for it was a loveliness of no common order.

Many a poet’s pen had attempted to describe Doris Marlowe, but it may safely be said that not one had succeeded; and not even a great portrait painter could have depicted the mobility of her clear, oval face, and its dark eyes and sensitive lips—eyes and lips so full of expression that people were sometimes almost convinced that she had spoken before she had uttered a word.

This evening, and at this moment, her face was all alive, as it were, with expression, as she put up her hand to smooth back the thick tresses of dark brown hair—so dark that it was almost black—and, stopping suddenly before a pier glass which stood at the end of the room, repeated the familiar lines:

“Good-night! Good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good-night till it be morrow!”

“Ah, no! No, no, no!” she exclaimed, stamping her foot and drawing her brows together at the reflection in the glass. “That is not it, nor anything like it. I shall never get it! Never! Nev——”

The door opened behind her, and she turned her wistful, dissatisfied, restless face over her shoulder toward the comer. It was an old man, bent almost double, with a thin and haggard face, from which gleamed a pair of dark eyes so brilliant and peering that they made the rest of the face look almost lifeless. He looked at her keenly, as he paused as if for breath, and, still looking at her, went to the table and laid a long roll of paper upon it; then he sank into a chair, and, leaning on his stick, said, in a hollow voice:

“Well?”

“But it isn’t well, Jeffrey. It’s bad, as bad as could be!” and the mobile lips allowed a quick, impatient laugh to escape, then compressed themselves as if annoyed at their levity. “I cannot do it! I cannot! I have tried it a hundred times, a thousand times! And it sounds more like—oh, it sounds more like a servant-maid saying, ‘Good-night, good-night, call me at seven to-morrow!’ than Juliet’s immortal adieu!”

“Does it?” said the old man, calmly.

“Yes, it does; very much!” she retorted, half laughing again. “Oh, Jeffrey, I can’t do it, and that is the simple truth! Tell them I cannot do it, and—and beg me off.”

The old man stretched out his hand slowly, and taking the paper from the table, as slowly unfastened it and displayed it at full length.

It was a playbill, printed in the usual style, in red and blue ink—

Theatre Royal, Barton. “Romeo and Juliet.” Miss Doris Marlowe as Juliet.

The girl looked at it, a faint color coming into her face; then she raised her eyes to the glittering ones above the placard and shook her head.

“Miss Doris Marlowe will murder Juliet!” she said; “that is what it will be, Jeffrey—simple murder. You must prevent the perpetration of so hideous a crime!”

“Too late!” he said in his hollow voice; “the bills are already out. The play is advertised in the papers; they were booking at the theatre when I left. You must play it. What is the matter?”

“The matter——” she began, then stopped abruptly, as if in despair. “I don’t know what is the matter. I only feel as if—oh, as if I were any one but Juliet. Why didn’t you let me go on playing little comedy parts, Jeffrey? I could do those after a fashion—but Juliet! I ought to be flattered,” and she looked at the bill, “but I am very frightened!” and she laughed again.

“Frightened!” he said, his thick white brows coming together. “Why should you be frightened? Have I not told you you could do it, and do I not know? Am I ever wrong?”

“No, no,” she hastened to reply. “You are always right, and it is I who am always wrong. And indeed, Jeffrey, dear, I will try! I will try for your sake!” and she glided across to his chair and laid her hand—a long, white hand, soft and slim as a child’s—upon his shoulder with tender docility.

“Try for your own,” he said, not unkindly, but gravely. “Try for art’s sake, and yet—yes, try for mine! You know how I have set my dream on your success—you know that it is the dream, the aim of my life! Ever since you were a child and sat upon my knee looking up into my face with your great eyes, I have looked forward to the day when the world should acknowledge that Jeffrey Flint could make a great actor though he failed himself!”

The dark eyes glittered still more keenly as he spoke, and the hand that held the playbill tightened.

“You will succeed if you set your heart on it,” he said more calmly. “You have done well up to now; I haven’t praised you: that is not my way; but—but—I am satisfied. Up to now you have got on in regular strides—to-morrow night is the great leap! The great chance that seldom comes more than once in a life. Take it, Doris, take it!”

“Yes, Jeffrey,” she said, softly; but he heard the sigh she tried to stifle and looked up.

“Well?” he said grimly. “You would say——”

She moved away from him and leaned against the table, her hands clasped loosely.

“I was going to say that it seems to me as if all the trying in the world would not make me a Shakespeare’s Juliet! The lines are beautiful, and I know them—oh, yes, I know them, but——” she paused, then went on dreamily: “Do you think any young girl, any one so young as I am, could play it properly, Jeffrey?”

“Juliet was fourteen,” he said, grimly.

Doris smiled.

“That’s a mistake, I think, Jeffrey; she was eighteen, most people say! Oh, she was young enough; yes, but—but then you see she had met Romeo.”

The old man looked at her attentively, then his keen gaze dropped to the floor.

“Is it necessary for an actor to have actually died before he can perfectly represent a death scene?” he asked.

She laughed, and a faint blush rose to her face.

“Perhaps dying isn’t so important as falling in love, Jeffrey; but it seems to me that one must have loved—and lost—before one can play Juliet, and I’ve done neither.”

He made no response to this piece of speculation; but after some minutes’ silence he said:

“Do some of it, Doris.”

She started slightly, as if he had awakened her from a dream, and recited some of the lines.

The old man watched her, and listened anxiously at first, then with rapt attention, as, losing herself in the part, she grew more emphatic and spontaneous; but suddenly she stopped.

“It will not do, Jeffrey, will it?” she said, quickly. “There—there is no heart in it, is there? Don’t tell me it’s all right!” she pleaded. “I always like the truth from you—at least!”

“And you get it,” he said, grimly. “No, it is not all right. You look——” he stopped—“and your voice is musical and thrilling, but—there is something wanting yet. Do not give it up—it will all come right. To-morrow with the lights and the people—there will be a full house, crammed—the feeling you want will come, and I shall be satisfied.”

He rose and rolled up the paper.

“I have to go back to the theatre.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said, quickly.

“No,” he said; “you are better alone. Take your book and go out into the fields. This room is not large enough—” and he passed out.

She understood him and, after a moment or two of reflection, got her hat, murmuring as she ran down the stairs—

“Dear old Jeffrey, I must do it for his sake.”

Doris Marlowe, as she passed down the quiet street, was as unlike the popular idea of an actress as it is possible to imagine. It is too generally supposed by the great public that an actress must necessarily be “loud” in word, dress and voice, that she must be affected on and off the stage, and that her behavior is as objectionable as her manner and attire. If the usual run of actresses are of this fashion, Doris was a singular exception to this rule. Her voice was soft and low, and as refined in its tones as the daughter of an earl; her manner was as quiet as any well-bred lady’s could be, and in her plain white dress and straw hat she looked as much like a schoolgirl as anything else, especially as she had a copy of “Romeo and Juliet” in her hand, which might have been mistaken for a French grammar.

There was in fact nothing “loud” about her; indeed, when off the stage she was rather silent and shy, and the color was as apt to come into her pale white cheeks as into those of the schoolgirl she resembled. It was only from the quiet play of the dark thick brows, and the ever changing expression of the eloquent eyes, that the keenest observer would ever have detected that Doris Marlowe was something different from the ordinary young lady whom one meets—and forgets—every day.

She passed up the street, her book held lightly in her hand, her eyes fixed dreamily on the roseate sky, and watching the din and bustle of the big manufacturing town which climbed up the hill in front of her, turned aside, and, making her way up a leafy lane, reached the fields which are as green as if Barton and its score of factory chimneys were a hundred miles away.

There was not only green grass, but clumps of trees and a running brook, and Doris, casting herself, after the fashion of her sex, on the bank by the stream, opened the book and began to study.

But after a few minutes, during which she kept her eyes upon the page with knitted brows, her thoughts began to wander, and, letting the book slip to the ground, she leaned against the trunk of a tree, and, clasping her hands around her knees, gave herself up to maiden meditation, fancy-free.

And it was of herself—of all people in the world!—she was thinking. She was looking back, recalling her past life, and marveling over it with a pleasant little wonder.

And yet there was nothing very marvelous in it after all.

Ever since she could remember she and Jeffrey—“dear old Jeffrey!”—had been alone. Ever since she could remember he had seemed to her as bent and white-haired and old as he was now, and she knew no more of him, or how it happened that he had stood to her in place of mother and father, and kith and kin, than she knew now.

Of her real father and her mother she had always been totally ignorant. As a child she had accepted Jeffrey as a fact, without questioning, and when, in later years, she had put some questions about her parents to him, she had equally accepted the answer.

“Ask me nothing, Doris. Your mother was an angel; your father——” Then he had stopped and left her; and, from that day to this, Doris had not repeated the question.

They had lived, she remembered, in complete solitude. Of Jeffrey’s early life she knew nothing for certain, excepting that he had been an actor; that he had been—and was—a gentleman; and that he had received a good education.

She had no other tutor than he, and she could have had no better. With a skill and patience which sprang from his love for her, he had taught her as few girls are taught. As a child, she would speak and write with wonderful fluency, and at the age most girls are struggling with five-finger exercises, she could play a sonata of Beethoven’s with a touch and brilliance which a professional might have envied.

Her strange guardian’s patience was untiring. He ransacked the stores of his memory on her behalf, he spent hours explaining the inner meaning of some line from Shakespeare—in showing her how to render a difficult piece of music.

And when, one day, when her beautiful girlhood was rich with the promise of a still more beautiful womanhood, she had looked up at him laughingly, and said:

“Why do you take all this trouble with me, Jeffrey? What shall I do with all these things you have taught me?” he had startled her by turning to her with flashing eyes, and saying, with grim earnestness:

“I have taken all this trouble, as you call it, for this reason—because I love you, and because I mean you to be a great actress!”

She accepted his dictum without a word, or a thought of questioning it. She knew, then, why he had taught her to love the great poet—why he had made her, and still made her, recite whole plays of Shakespeare—why he spent hours in showing her how such and such a speech should be delivered. And she was grateful—as grateful as if he had been rich and surrounded her with luxury, instead of being poor and sharing with her the shabby rooms and simple fare which were the best he could afford.

It was a gray and sober life, enlivened only by frequent visits to the theatre. They had lived in France and Germany as well as in England, and he had taken her to see the first players in each country.

“Remember,” he would say, when they had returned from seeing some famous actress, “remember how she spoke that line, that is how it should be delivered,” or, “Did you notice how Madame So-and-so went off in the second scene? Then don’t go and do likewise!” and Doris’s trained intellect had stored up the hints for future use.

It was a life of hard work, and some girls would have become dull and listless, but Doris was light-hearted; her laugh was always ringing in the dingy lodgings as if they were palaces and she was happy and content.

Then had come the time of her first appearance on the stage. It is the fashion nowadays for an actor to begin at the top of the ladder—and, alas, how often he works downward! Jeffrey chose that the beautiful girl whom he had trained so carefully should begin at the bottom.

“Learn to walk the stage, and deliver a simple message: that is difficult enough at first, easy as it seems,” he had said; and Doris put on cotton frocks and white caps, and played servant maids for a time. From them she rose to young lady parts—always easy, unpretentious ones, and always in the country theatres.

“When we take London it shall be by storm,” he said.

And so she went from one country town to another, and the young actress grew more familiar with her art each month, and the critics began to notice her, and to praise not only her beauty but her talent.

And all this time, Doris, even in the gayest surroundings of her daily life, remained unsophisticated and natural. Jeffrey watched over her as jealously as a father could have done.

He could not prevent people admiring her, but he kept the love letter, the neat little cases of jewelry from her, and Doris—Doris Marlowe the actress—was as ignorant and unconscious of the wickedness of the world as the daughter of a country rector.

And as ignorant and innocent of love, save the love she had for the strange, grim being who had lavished so much on her.

She had read of love in books, had acted it on the stage, but it was as one who speaks a language he does not understand, and who marvels at the effect his words have upon his initiated hearers.

Once a young actor, who had played lovers’ parts with her during a season, had managed to speak with her alone—it was during the “wait” between acts—and in faltering accents had tried to tell her that he had dared to fall in love with the beautiful being so jealously guarded by the dragon. Doris had listened for a moment or two, with her lovely eyes wide open, with puzzled astonishment, then she said:

“Oh, please, don’t go on! I thought it was a part of the play,” and a smile flashed over her face.

The young fellow grew black, and as he passed her to go on the stage, muttered, “Heartless!”

But Doris was not heartless. She had smiled because her heart lay too deep for him to touch, because, like the Sleeping Beauty, it was waiting for the coming prince who should wake it into life and love, and the young actor was not that prince.

Doris sat thinking of the past, quite lost, until the striking of a church clock recalled her to the fact that a certain young lady was to play Juliet to-morrow, and that the aforesaid young lady had come out into the field to study it!

She took up the book with a sigh.

“I wish I could see some one play it,” she thought; and then there flashed into her mind the memory of one night Jeffrey had taken her to Drury Lane to see a famous actress in the part; but they did not see her after all, for during the first act there had been one of those slight but unmistakable movements in the audience which announces the entrance of some one of importance.

Doris looked round, with the rest, and saw some persons come into a box on the grand tier. Among them was an old gentleman, tall and thin, with a remarkably distinguished presence. He wore a blue ribbon across his waistcoat, but Doris had been attracted more by his face even than by the ribbon.

It was a handsome face, but there was something in it, a certain cold and pitiless hauteur, that seemed to strike a chill almost to Doris’ heart. As he stood in front of the box, and looked around the house with an expression of contempt that was just too indolent to be sheer hatred, she met the hard, merciless eyes and shuddered.

“Who is he, Jeffrey?” she asked, in a whisper, and touching his arm with a hand that trembled a little.

Jeffrey’s rapt face had been fixed on the stage, but he turned and looked at the distinguished personage, and Doris remembered now the sudden pallor of his face, from which his glittering eyes had flashed like two spots of red fire set in white ashes.

The look vanished in a moment and he made no reply, and a few minutes afterward had said:

“It is too hot—let us go.”

Doris recalled the incident now, and wished they had stopped and seen the great actress; especially as Jeffrey had always afterward avoided “Romeo and Juliet,” as if the play had some painful association.

“I shall have to draw on Shakespeare alone for inspiration,” she thought, looking at the brook. “But, ah! if only some one could only teach me to say that ‘Good-night, good-night!’ properly.”

She was repeating the words in a dozen different tones, and shrugging her shoulders discontentedly over each, when suddenly there came another sound upon her ears beside that of her voice and the brook.

It was a dull thud, thud, on the meadow in front of her, and as it came nearer a voice broke out in a kind of accompaniment, a voice singing not unmusically:

“The Maids of Merry England, the Merry, Merry Maids of England!”

There was a hedge on the other side of the brook, and Doris raised herself on her elbow and looked over.

What she saw was a young man galloping across the meadow at a breakneck speed, which the horse seemed to enjoy as much as his rider.

Doris had never seen any one ride like that, and she was too absorbed in the general spectacle to notice that the young man was singularly handsome, and that he made, as he sat slightly in the saddle, with the sunset rays turning the yellow of his mustache and hair to pure gold, a picture which Murillo might have painted and christened “Youth and Health.”

She watched for a moment or two; then, thinking herself safe from observation behind her hedge, sank down again, and took up her book.

But the thud, thud, and the “Maids of Merry England” came nearer and nearer. Then they stopped together, and a voice, speaking this time, said:

“Hallo, old girl!—over with you!”

The next moment Doris saw horse and rider in the air, almost above her head, and the next the horse was on its knees, with its nose on the ground, and the rider lay stretched at her feet, as if a hand from the blue sky had hurled him from his seat.

CHAPTER II.

OVER THE FENCE.

It had all happened so suddenly that Doris sat for a moment staring at the motionless figure. Then the color forsook her face, and she sprang up with a cry, and looked round for help. There was not a moving thing in sight excepting the horse, who had picked himself up and was calmly, not to say contemptuously, grazing a few yards off.

Doris, trembling a little, knelt down and bent over the young man. His eyes were closed, and his face was white, and there was a thin streak of red trickling down his forehead.

A spasm ran through her heart as she looked, for the sudden dread had flashed across her mind that—he was dead.

“Oh, what shall I do?” she cried, and she sprang to her feet, aroused by the impulse to run for assistance; but the white, still face seemed to utter a voiceless appeal to her not to leave him, and she hesitated. No!—she would not leave him.

She whipped out her handkerchief, and, running to the brook, dashed it into the water; then, kneeling down beside him, bathed his forehead, shuddering a little as she saw that the thin streak of red came again as fast as she washed it away.

Presently she fancied that she saw a faint tremor upon the pale lips, and in her eagerness and anxiety she sank down upon the grass and drew his head upon her knee, and with faltering hands unfastened his collar. She did it in pure ignorance, but it happened to be exactly the right thing to do, and after a moment or two the young fellow shivered slightly, and, to Doris’ unspeakable relief, opened his eyes. There was no sense in them for a spell, during which Doris noticed, in the way one notices trivial things in moments of deep anxiety, that they were handsome eyes, of a dark brown; and that the rest of the face was worthy of the eyes; and there flashed through her mind the half-formed thought that it would have been a pity for one so young and so good-looking to have died. Then a faint intelligence came into his upturned gaze, and he looked up into her great pitying eyes with a strange look of bewilderment which gradually grew into a wondering admiration that brought a dash of color to Doris’ face.

“Where am I?” he said at last, and the voice that had sung “The Maids of Merry England” sounded strangely thin and feeble; “am I—dead?”

It was a queer question. Did he think that it was an angel bending over him? A faint smile broke over Doris’ anxious face, and one sprang up to his to meet it.

“I remember,” he said, without taking his eyes from her face; “Poll pitched me over the hedge.”

He tried to laugh and raise his head, but the laugh died away with suspicious abruptness and his head sunk back.

“I—I beg your pardon!” he said. “I must have come an awful cropper; I—I feel as if I couldn’t move!” and he made another effort.

“Oh, no, no,” said Doris anxiously; “do not try—yet. Oh, I am afraid you are very much hurt! Let me——” she wiped his forehead again. “If there were only some one else to help,” she exclaimed in a piteous voice.

“Don’t—don’t—please don’t you trouble about it,” he said, pleadingly. “I shall be all right directly. It’s ridiculous—” he added faintly, but endeavoring to laugh again. “I feel as if I’d got rusty hinges at the back of my neck.”

His eyes closed for a moment, for, notwithstanding the laugh and his would-be light tone, he was in considerable pain; then he opened them again and let them rest upon her face.

“You’re awfully good to me!” he said, slowly. “I feel ashamed—” he stopped, and a deep blush rose through the tan of his face, for he had suddenly realized that his head was in her lap, a fact of which Doris was perfectly unconscious. “Awfully good!” he repeated.

“Oh, don’t talk!” she said, earnestly. “You—you are not able! Oh! if there was something I could do! Water! I will get you some to drink,” and she put his head gently from her and rose.

He smothered a sigh.

“There’s—there’s a flask in my saddle-pocket, if I could only get at it,” he said.

“I’ll get it,” she said, swiftly.

“No, no,” he said, quickly. “The—the horse, I mean might—”

But she was off like the wind, and quite regardless of danger. The horse raised his head and looked at her, and apparently seemed to take in the gravity of the situation, for it stood quite still while she searched the saddle.

“It is not here!” she said, in a voice of distress.

“No, by Jove, I recollect! I left it at home,” he faltered. “I’m so sorry! Don’t—please—don’t trouble!” and he raised himself on his elbow.

She flew from the horse to the brook, then stopped short for a moment as she remembered that she had nothing to hold water. He watched her and understood.

“Never mind,” he said.

“But there must be some way!” she cried, distressfully.

“If—if you’ll bring some in your hands,” he suggested, the color coming into his face.

She stopped and made a cup of her two palms, and turned to him carefully, fearful of spilling a drop.

The young fellow hesitated, and first glanced up at her face, unseen by her, then bent his head.

When he raised it there was a strange look in his eyes, and he drew a long breath. Doris dropped her hands with a sudden swiftness.

Reverently, gratefully as his lips had touched her hands, their touch had sent a strange thrill through her.

“I—I am afraid you did not get much,” she said, and her voice faltered, though she strove to keep it firm and steady.

“Yes, yes!” he said. “Thank you very much. I am better—all right now!” and to prove it he sat up and looked round him.

But his eyes returned to her face almost instantly, as if loth to leave it.

“I never was so sorry in all my life,” he said. “To think that I should have given you all this trouble! And—and frightened you, too!” he added, for she had sunk down upon the bank and was trembling a little as she wiped her hands.

“No, no, I am not frightened,” she said. “But it—it was so sudden.”

He looked round and bit his lip.

“Great Heavens!” he exclaimed, remorsefully, “I—I might have fallen on to you!”

A faint smile played upon her lips for an instant.

“You nearly did so as it was,” she said.

He drew a long breath, and his eyes sought her face penitently.

“It was abominably careless of me,” he said in a low voice. “But I had no idea that there was any one here; I didn’t think of looking over the hedge.”

“It is a very high one,” she said, and her lips quivered with a little shudder, as she recalled the moment in which she saw him fall.

He glanced at it carelessly.

“Polly would have done it if it hadn’t been for the brook! I’d forgotten that there might be a drop this side, and——” He stopped short, his eyes fixed upon her dress, upon which were two or three red spots staining its whiteness. He put his hand to his head. “Your dress!” he said. “Look there! I’ve spoiled it!”

She looked down at the stains—they were still wet—and felt for her handkerchief. It was lying on the grass.

“Will you let me?” he said pleadingly, and he took out his own handkerchief and tried to wipe out the spots.

“Never mind,” she said. “It does not matter.”

“And your hat and book!” He picked them up and glanced at the latter. “‘Romeo and Juliet!’ You were reading! What a nuisance I have made of myself. I shall never forgive myself nor forget your kindness! If you hadn’t been here——” he stopped.

She seemed to be scarcely listening to him.

He sat down, almost at her feet, and fastened his collar, his eyes resting on her face. He had seen many beautiful women, this young man, but he thought, as he looked at her, that he had never seen any one so perfectly lovely.

With a vague feeling of wonder he noticed that her hair was dark, almost black, and yet her eyes were blue. They were hidden now between the long, dark lashes, and yet he knew they were blue, for he remembered noticing it in the first moments of wandering consciousness.

Was it this strange contrast, the blue eyes and black hair, that made her so lovely? Or was it the shape of the thin, delicate red lips? He tried to answer the mental question, but his brain seemed in a whirl.

It was not the effects of his fall, but the witchery of her presence.

She was so perfectly still, her face set in quiet gravity, that he feared to speak or move, lest he should disturb her. Then, suddenly, she looked up with a little start.

“I must go,” she said, almost to herself.

“Oh, no!” he pleaded. “Wait and rest for a little while!”

She turned her face toward him with a smile, but her eyes were half veiled by the long lashes.

“It is you that should rest,” she said.

“Oh! I’m all right,” he said. “But you have had a fright, and are—are upset, and no wonder. I’m afraid you’ll never forgive me,” he added, remorsefully.

“Forgive?” she repeated, as if she had not understood.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid, if ever we meet again, that you will think of me as—as the clumsy fellow who nearly rode over you, and—and gave you all this trouble!”

“No,” she said, simply, “there is nothing to forgive.”

She raised her eyes to his face for a moment as she spoke. He was still bareheaded, and his hat lay a shapeless mass in the brook, and the water had formed the yellow hair into short, crisp curls on his white forehead, and in his dark eyes lingered the look which they had worn when he had first returned to consciousness—a look of hungering, reverent admiration.

She took up her hat and put it on slowly. A spell seemed to have fallen on her. She thought it was the reaction after the excitement.

“I must go,” she said. “But you? Shall I send some one to help you?”

He rose, reluctantly, and laughed softly.

“To help me!” he said. “But I am all right; I never felt better. It’s not my first tumble by many; and, besides, I’ve not far to go. But you will let me see you home? I”—he faltered—“I should like to tell your people, and thank them——”

“No, no,” she said, her eyes following the direction which he had taken when he said that he had not far to go.

“I am staying at the Towers,” he said, responding to her look. “You know the Towers?”

She shook her head.

“I am staying with my uncle. My name is Neville—Cecil Neville——” he stopped as if he expected or wished that she would tell him hers, but Doris remained silent.

“That’s my uncle’s horse, and I hope I haven’t lamed her!” he laughed.

“Oh, no! Poor thing!” said Doris, pityingly. “It wasn’t her fault!”

“No, it was all mine,” he said. “And I may not go home with you? Will you let me call and thank you—properly—to-morrow?”

She raised her eyes with a fleeting glance.

“It is not necessary,” she said.

His face fell. She lingered a moment, then she turned away.

“Good-afternoon.”

He glanced up at the sky.

“Good-night!” he said, slowly. “Good-night!” in so low a voice that it seemed almost a whisper.

She walked through the clump of trees for a hundred yards perhaps, then stopped with a start.

In the spell that had fallen upon her, she had forgotten her book. She looked round and saw that he was standing where she had left him. She waited, and presently he moved, and going to the brook, knelt down and bathed his face and head. Then he went toward the horse, and calling it to him, got into the saddle. Not till he had got some distance did she venture to return.

Her book was there, and beside it the handkerchief with which he had tried to remove the stains from her dress; they were there still!

She took it up and looked at it dreamily; the whole incident seemed almost a dream! and saw in a corner, worked in red silk, the initials C. N., and above them a coronet.

She was about to drop the handkerchief where she had found it, but instead she thrust it out of sight in the bosom of her dress.

Then with a smile she opened the book.

By a strange coincidence it opened at the page upon which appeared the words that had proved such a stumbling-block to her, and half unconsciously she murmured:

“Good-night, good-night!”

What was it that made her start and brought the warm blood to her face?

Only this, that now for the first time the words seemed to possess their real meaning. She had learned how to speak them!

“Good-night! Good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good-night till it be morrow!”

She ought to have been glad; why then did she utter a little cry almost of dismay, and cover her face with her hands?

CHAPTER III.

“IF I SHOULD FAIL.”

Doris sped homeward, but, fast as she walked, her thoughts seemed to outrun her. Had she fallen asleep by the brook and dreamed it all? She could almost have persuaded herself that she had, but for the handkerchief hidden in the bosom of her dress.

“Cecil Neville!” She repeated the name twenty times, and each time it sounded more pleasant and musical. There was no need to call up the remembrance of his face, for that floated before her mental vision as she hurried on with downcast, dreamy eyes.

“Am I out of my senses?” she exclaimed, at last, trying to rid herself of the spell by a light laugh. “Any one would think I was playing the part of a sentimental young lady in a three-act comedy. It was rather like a play; but it’s generally the hero who saves the life of the principal lady. I didn’t save his life, though he says I did. How he said it! Why can’t one speak like that on the stage, now? Cecil Neville!”

She took out the handkerchief and looked at it.

“And this is a coronet. What is he, I wonder? A duke, or an earl, or what? And what does it matter to me what he is?” she asked herself in the next breath. “I may never see him again, and if I did we should meet as strangers. Dukes or earls have nothing in common with actresses. I wish I could forget all about him. But I can’t—I can’t,” she murmured, almost piteously. “Oh, I wish I had stayed at home, and yet I don’t, either,” she added, slowly. “If I had not been there, perhaps he would not have come to, and might be lying there now!” she shuddered. “How brave and strong he looked riding at the hedge; it was a mad thing to do! And yet he made light of it! Ah, it is nice to be a man—and such a man! Cecil Neville! I wish he had not told me his name! I cannot get it out of my head. And he lives with his uncle at the Towers. Perhaps Jeffrey knows who the uncle is. I must tell him,” she sighed. Somehow she felt a strong reluctance to speak of the afternoon’s adventure; but she had never had any secrets from Jeffrey, and she added with another sigh: “Yes, I must tell him. He will be angry—no, he is never angry, but he will be—what? sorry. And yet I could not help it. It was not I who rode at the hedge, and—I wonder what he thought of me when he came to?” A burning blush rose to her face, and she stopped still to contemplate the new phase of the question. “I—I had his head upon my lap! Oh, what could he have thought? That I was forward and impertinent, and yet, no, he did not look as if he did, and—and he thanked me and asked me to forgive him—how many times! Cecil Neville. There”—and she laughed impatiently—“that is the last time I will think of his name—or him!”

With this prudent resolve she hurried on, and burst into the little room out of breath, to find Jeffrey seated at the table and waiting for his supper.

He looked up with his keen glance, and nodded.

“I am so sorry I’ve kept you waiting, Jeffrey,” she said, humbly, as she threw her hat on the sofa and went to the table.

“No matter,” he said; “you have been walking up and down in the fields studying, I know,” and he nodded. “It is just the hour, the mystic gloaming, when the brain quickens and ideas are born.”

“Yes,” she said, her long lashes covering her eyes. “I have been in the fields, and, Jeffrey, I’ve had an adventure!”

“Cows?” he said, absently. “There is nothing like the open air for such work as you have in hand. Rachel, the greatest actress of her time, or any other, did most of her work in the open air——”

“It wasn’t cows,” she broke in, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact voice; “it was a horse,” and she laughed a little nervously.

“My kingdom for a horse,” he quoted, failing to see the unusual color in her face, and not observing that she was making a mere pretense of eating, just breaking a piece of toast with her fingers and sipping her coffee. “And are you more satisfied now? I have only just come from the theatre; the booking is the heaviest they have had for years. I have persuaded the manager to increase the orchestra! Have you seen your dress? It has come, and I had it sent up to your room.”

“I did not go up; I will try it on directly.”

He pushed his chair back, and began walking up and down the room, his hands crossed behind his bent back, his head drooping, his glittering eyes fixed on the floor.

Doris knew that it was hopeless to attempt to speak of anything but the play, but she made another effort, for conscience sake.

“Do you know who lives in that large place on the hill, Jeffrey, the—the Towers, it is called?”

He shook his head with distinct indifference.

“No; some marquis or other. What does it matter?” he added, impatiently.

“Well, I saw the nephew of the marquis—if he is a marquis—this afternoon. He fell off his horse——”

“Yes!” he said, with profound indifference. “I remember a manager who put horses on in the first scene of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ It was effective—but unnecessary. By the way, take care how you arrange your train in the ballroom scene; leave Romeo room to get near you without having to draw it on one side; it attracts attention from the action of the play at a most important moment. A detail; but it is the details that, massed together, make or mar the whole.”

She made yet another effort.

“I was going to tell you about the accident, Jeffrey.”

He started, and, stopping in his walk, confronted her with alarm in his face.

“What accident? I have only just left the theatre; it was all right then! Oh, you allude to the man who tumbled off his horse? Never mind; put it out of your head; don’t think of anything but your part. Have you finished your supper?”

“Yes,” she said, with a sigh and a smile; it was, indeed, utterly useless to make any further attempt.

“Well, then, let us go over the balcony scene,” and he snatched up the book and turned to the page with nervous fingers.

Doris rose and opened her lips; then, with a sudden blush, that was as quickly followed by a strange pallor, she went to him and gently took the book from his hand.

“Not to-night, not again, Jeffrey,” she said, with a nervousness that was strange in her. “I—I could not! Don’t be angry, but”—she looked from side to side with a strangely troubled air—“I—I don’t think I could do it to-night! Don’t ask me!”

He nodded once or twice, looking at her meditatively.

“I think I understand,” he said, as if to himself. “You are afraid of getting hackneyed? Perhaps you are right. Yes, you are right,” he added, quietly; “there is such a thing as over-training. Yes, I know what you mean. Better let it rest for to-night, after the rehearsal this morning and the study this afternoon.”

Doris turned her head away with a guilty sense of having deceived him.

“It is not that,” she faltered, “but——” She stopped, and going to him suddenly, hid her face on his shoulder. “Oh, Jeffrey, if I should fail to-morrow!”

He patted her arm soothingly.

“There’s no such word for us, Doris,” he said, with grim confidence. “Don’t speak of failing. Fail! What, after all these years!”—his voice grew hoarse. “Why, child, what is the matter with you to-night?” he broke off in alarm, for he could feel that she was crying softly, and crying was by no means one of Doris’ customary habits.

She raised her head, and hastily wiping her eyes, laughed.

“What is the matter with me, Jeffrey? I wish I knew. Perhaps it’s the excitement! There, I’m all right now,” and she slid away from him.

The old man seized her arm, and looked into her face intently.

“Doris!” he said, in a husky voice; “you—you are not unhappy?”

“Unhappy!” and she laughed again. “Why should I be unhappy? Perhaps I cried because I’m too happy! Grief and joy are next of kin, you know. And oughtn’t I to be filled with joy, I, the Doris Marlowe, who is to play Juliet to-morrow night?”

His hand dropped from her arm, but he was only half-satisfied.

“If I thought——” he muttered. “Doris, you are all the world to me! Before Heaven I have had no thought but for you since”—he stopped abruptly—“since you became my care; day and night, early and late, I have worked to one end—to make you great and famous and happy! If I thought——” he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and looked at her almost wildly.

“I know, I know! Dear, dear old Jeffrey!” she murmured, soothing him with touch and voice. “No, I don’t know, but I can guess all you have been to me, all you have done for me. And I am happy, very, very happy! And I will be great and famous if you wish it! You shall see!” she said, nodding, and smiling through the tears that veiled her lovely eyes. “Wait till to-morrow night. There, it is you who are excited now! And now I’m going to try my dress on. We must look the Juliet if we cannot act her,” and she stooped and kissed his forehead and ran from the room.

The old man stood where she had left him, his hands working behind his back, his brows knotted into thick cords, his eyes fixed on the ground.

Doubt, almost remorse, were depicted on his countenance with an intensity almost terrible. He sank into a chair, and, covering his face with his hands, seemed lost in a dream. Presently the door opened, and Doris, like a vision of loveliness, stood in her white satin dress before him.

She held the long train in one hand, and in the other a candle above her head, and stood with a grave smile upon her beautiful face, waiting. He looked up, then with a sudden cry threw out his arms.

“Lucy, Lucy, I did it for the best, for the best!”

“Jeffrey!” exclaimed Doris, “Jeffrey!” and she hastened toward him in alarm; but the sound of her voice had recalled him to himself, and, passing his hand across his forehead he rose and looked at her.

“Yes, yes!” he said, still in a half-dazed manner. “Yes, it will do. Doris, you are very beautiful.”

She colored and shook her head.

“What a wicked thing to say, you flatterer! But, Jeffrey, why did you call me Lucy?” she asked, bending over him, her brows drawn together anxiously.

“Did I?” he replied, evasively. “I—I must have been dreaming. There—ask me no more questions. The dress is perfect. Perfect!” he repeated, emphatically, but looking at her face and not the dress. “Walk across the room.” She did so. “Now, stand as I showed you. So! Yes, yes,” he murmured with a sigh of satisfaction; “perfect! You look the part, Doris; not one of them could look it better—no! And to-morrow”—he stopped and regarded her with an earnestness that was almost fierce. “Child, if you fail to-morrow, you will kill me! Go now; go to bed and rest. Go!” he repeated, still looking at her, but waving her away with his hand as if she recalled some memory too painful to be borne; and Doris, stooping and kissing him, went up to her own room again. There she stood before the glass and looked at herself with a scrutiny that she had never used before.

Jeffrey had called her beautiful. Was she really beautiful? Did others think her so?—did he? She took up the handkerchief and looked at it dreamily; then, still in her Juliet dress, she joined her hands together as she had done when she had made a cup for him; and as she did so, the warm blood rushed to her face, for she could almost fancy that even now she could feel the touch of his lips and the golden moustache upon the soft, pink palms.

Rest! If to lie awake until the clock struck midnight, and then to fall asleep and dream that she was still bending over the handsome face, all pale but for the thin streak of red; to hear in her sleep the strong, musical voice murmuring, “Will you forgive me?” was rest—then Doris was resting, indeed!

CHAPTER IV.

AT THE TOWERS.

Cecil Viscount Neville rode off at a gallop at first, but presently he pulled the horse up into a walk, for he wanted to think. Something had happened besides his tumble that afternoon to “shake the soul of him,” as Tasso says. The blood was coursing through his veins at racing pace, and his heart was beating violently with a new and strange emotion. It seemed to him that he had been in fairyland.

Just as Doris had taken out the handkerchief and looked at it to convince herself that she had not been dreaming, so he put his hand to the cut on his forehead to help him to realize that imagination had not been playing pranks with him.

He had seen beautiful women; in the language of his world he had had some half-a-dozen of them at least “pitched at his head;” but this one——

He stopped the horse, and recalled her face as it had looked down upon him when he came back to consciousness.

“I thought I was dead and that she was an angel!” he murmured, his face flushing. “There never were eyes like hers! And her voice! And I don’t know her name even! And I may never see her again! I must, I must! And I might have ridden over that beautiful creature—she might have been lying there instead of me!” he shuddered. “I ought to have killed myself, clumsy, awkward idiot! But she forgave me, yes, she forgave me!” and he tried to recall, and succeeded in recalling, every word she had spoken. “I wonder who she is?” he asked himself for the hundredth time. “Why didn’t I ask her her name? No, I remember I could not! I—I never felt like that before, never! I felt actually afraid of her! I’ve half a mind to ride back—would she be angry, I wonder? I didn’t thank her enough. Why, I behaved like a fool! She must have thought me one! I’ll ride back and beg her to tell me who she is. I must know!” and he was about to turn the horse when the clock of the Towers solemnly chimed the hour.

He started and looked at his watch.

“Dinner time,” he murmured, “and it’s a mortal sin to be five minutes late! No matter, I must go back,” and he swung round. Then he pulled up again. “No; she will not like it! It—it will seem as if I were forcing myself on her, and after all her goodness to me! But not to know her name even!” and, with something between a sigh and a groan, he put the horse into a gallop and rode toward home.

Fortunately for the horse, she had struck her knees upon the bank, and was uninjured, for Lord Cecil had—with unusual indifference—quite forgotten her, and it was not until he had ridden into the courtyard of the Towers, and met the surprised stare of the groom who came forward, that he remembered the animal.

“I’ve had a tumble,” he said. “It was my fault, not Polly’s! Give her an extra feed and wipe down,” he added, as he patted her. “She isn’t hurt, I’m glad to say.”

“But you are, my lord, I’m afraid!” said the groom.

“Not a bit,” said Lord Cecil, with a smile, and he hurried across the courtyard, and up the stone steps to the terrace.

The long walk, laid in Carrara marble, and running the whole length of the house, was perfectly empty, and everything was suspiciously quiet.

“They’ve begun dinner,” said Lord Cecil, with a shrug of his shoulders. “That’s unpleasant! I don’t know my uncle very intimately, but I have a shrewd suspicion that he is the sort of man to cut up rough! Well, no, I don’t suppose he would be rough if I burned the place down, but he’d be unpleasantly smooth.”

He hurried along, past a long line of windows, screened by their curtains, and then past one through which the light came in innumerable streaks of color—it was the stained oriel window—and at last reached the great hall.

A groom of the chambers, attired in a dark purple livery that looked almost like a court suit, came forward with something like solemn gravity.

“I’m late, eh?” said Lord Cecil, and his clear, young voice, musical as it was, sounded large and loud in the solemn, subdued air of the place.

“Dinner has been served twenty-two minutes, my lord,” was the grave reply.

“Oh! hang the two minutes,” said Lord Cecil, “I shan’t be long.” And he bounded up the stairs, apparently to the amazement of the official and a couple of stately footmen, who looked after him with surprise. It took him some two or three minutes to reach his room. The Towers was a huge place, but which, huge as it was, the marquis only dwelt in for a month or two once in three or four years—he had so many other and huger places—and Lord Cecil found his valet waiting for him.

“Look sharp, Parkins,” he said, slipping off his coat. “I’m awfully late. Has the marquis inquired for me?”

“No, my lord,” said Parkins, as he set about his ministration with quiet celerity. “Mr. Scobie, the butler, did mention that his lordship never waited for any one.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Lord Cecil. “It’s bad enough to spoil one’s own dinner without ruining other people’s. All right? What are you fumbling at?”

“I was trying to hide the cut on your forehead, my lord.”

“Oh! never mind that,” said Lord Cecil, impatiently, and he hurried down.

The groom came forward with stately step, and led the way to the dining-room, and opened the door slowly, as if it were the entrance to the court.

It was a magnificent room, so large that it had been found necessary to curtail its dimensions with screens and curtains, the last of crimson plush with heavy bullion fringe. The table was loaded with a splendid service of plate, and at the head of it sat the Most Honorable the Marquis of Stoyle, Earl of Braithwaite and Denbigh, of Scotland, Baron Barranough of Ireland, Knight of the Garter of England, etc.

He rose with majestic courtesy as Lord Cecil entered, and the light from the delicately-shaded lamp, falling full upon his face and figure, made a picture of them calculated to strike the least observant of mortals.

He was an old man—seventy-two, the “Peerage” says, and that cannot lie, as somebody remarks—but he was as straight as an arrow, and save for two lines running from the corners of his finely-shaped nose, and a few wrinkles at the ends of his gray, piercing eyes, the face was as smooth as Lord Cecil’s own; smooth and almost as pale as ivory; every feature as cleanly cut as if it were carved in; smooth and cold as ice; and yet, with all its icelike impassability, a vague, indefinite something, not marked enough for an expression, which always riveted a stranger’s gaze, and made him uncomfortable. It was not exactly contempt, or hauteur, or dislike, but a commingling of all three, which imparted to the face a quality hard to define but easy to feel. It should be added, to complete the picture, that his white hair, worn rather long, was brushed straight back from his white forehead, and that the hands were snowy in color and of quite feminine shape and texture.

This imposing figure stood upright until Lord Cecil had taken his seat, the hard, steellike eyes regarding him with an impassive, icelike courtesy, then sank into its seat again.

It was not until he had done so that Lord Cecil was startled by seeing that a third person was present, for he had been unable to remove his eyes from the marquis’ while they were on his face. Now he saw that between him and the marquis sat a lady; and Lord Cecil, as his senses woke to the fact of her presence, was guilty of an astonished stare.

It is not given to every one to meet in one day the two most beautiful women he had ever seen, but this was Lord Cecil’s fate. The lady was young, with a fair and perfectly-tinted face, with dark-brown eyes, and hair that shone like raw silk under the mellow light that fell from the candelabra above.

Her presence was so unexpected that Lord Cecil might be pardoned for expressing in his gaze something of the surprise he felt.

The sound of the marquis’ voice, low and yet clear, like the sound of a treble-bell, recalled him to himself and his manners.

“This is Lord Cecil Neville, Lady Grace,” he said, and he just moved his snowy hand. “Cecil, I think I told you that I expected Lady Grace?”

Lord Cecil bowed, and the lady inclined her head with a smile.

“As we are strangers, and Lord Neville has probably never heard of me, marquis, perhaps you had better add that I am Lord Peyton’s daughter.”

The marquis bowed.

“Of course I have heard of you, Lady Grace,” said Lord Cecil.

The dark-brown eyes opposite him grew rather keen as they rested on his face, but for a moment only, then she smiled again.

“If I had known that you were here——” He stopped and laughed. “Well, I was going to say that I’d have been home earlier, but the fact is I met with a slight accident and was detained.”

The dark eyes seemed to flash over him, then fixed themselves upon the cut on his forehead.

“You were not hurt, I hope?” she said. “I see you have a cut on your brow.”

“No,” he said. “It is nothing.”

“How did it happen?” asked Lady Grace. The marquis had not condescended to make any inquiry; indeed, for any sign or interest he might have been stone deaf.

“Got pitched over a hedge,” he said.

“By a man?” she asked, raising her brows.

He laughed.

“No, by a horse. By the way, sir,” he said, turning to the marquis, “I am glad to say that the horse is not injured.”

“No?” said the marquis, with slow indifference. “Perhaps that is as well; horses are valuable,” and the tone more than the words seemed to add—“and men—especially Lord Cecil Neville—are not.”