A Heart-Song of To-day Part 59

"Calm yourself, you poor little woman, this pa.s.sion will soon pa.s.s; I shall be away, other men will teach you to forget me, be kind to poor Haughton for my sake (if I may say so) and your own, and now, dear, that your pa.s.sionate heart is beating slower, let me bring you to the _salons_ ere you are missed."

"Your voice is full of music, else I would not stay so still," and again he feels her tremble for she thinks of the flying moments of her losing game, and of her fierce lover as victor. "But there is no time to be-so sweetly still," and her voice sinks to a whisper, "or else I could be forever so, see, I kneel to you; nay, you must let me be,"

and the words came brokenly and more pa.s.sionately than any ever having pa.s.sed her lips, "you, and you only, have ever had the power to subdue me." Here her face changed to a sickly pallor as of faintness, a tremor ran through her whole frame, and saying in a breathless whisper, "Great heavens! your life is in danger, follow my cue; will you take care of the boy?"

"I will, Mrs. Haughton; pray arise."

While he was speaking, crash, crash, went the plate gla.s.s in the window behind him, and black Delrose, looking like a very fiend, bounded in, taking up a bronze statue of Achilles, hurled it at Trevalyon, who only escaped from the fact of having stooped with the utmost apparent _sang-froid_ to pick up a rose his fair companion had dropped from her corsage. Achilles, instead of his head, shattering the greater part of a costly mirrored wall, with ornaments on a Queen Anne mantel-piece.

"This will settle him," he now yelled furiously, and about to fire from, a pocket pistol.

"Hold!" cried Kate, "'twas no love scene."

"By heaven, 'tis well, or he had been a dead man," he said furiously, lowering his arm. "Explain yourself, Trevalyon, or you--"

"Beware, George," said Kate, breathlessly.

"I shall not, Kate; you have maddened me and by the stars he shall say why you knelt to him. I suppose you would like me, forsooth! to admire the _nonchalante_ manner of his posing at the time," and turning like a madman to Trevalyon, shaking his clenched fist in his face, said fiercely, "by the stars you shall speak. Why did she kneel to you?"

"Calm yourself, Delrose," he answered quietly, for the first time pitying this pa.s.sionate woman, "Mrs. Haughton is the wife of my friend!"

"Men always respect such facts," sneered Delrose; "no, that won't go down; Kate, you or he shall tell me or I shall not answer for the consequences."

Kate, fearing for Trevalyon, answered quickly:

"I was imploring him to look after your boy, and not allow the priest to spoil him for a soldier."

"You swear this?"

"You, I know, are satisfied with nothing else."

"That won't do; do you swear you asked him to do this as you knelt,"

he said, slowly and jealously.

"I do."

"And what says this squire _des dames_?" he continued sneering and turning suspiciously to Trevalyon.

"That Mrs. Haughton has condescended to explain the situation or I shouldn't, and that a gentleman never questions the word of a lady,"

he answered coolly, and haughtily continuing, "may I be your escort back to the _salons_, Mrs. Haughton."

Kate seeing the look of impatient hate settling in the eyes of her lover, said hastily,

"Thanks; no, Sir Lionel;" she would have added more but for the jealous gaze of Delrose, who said as she went to Trevalyon's a.s.sistance in opening the spring lock.

"Yes; go, Kate, to your last act in the farces of Haughton Hall, you must then come to my a.s.sistance with the drop curtain." While he speaks the hands of the man, impatient to be with the love of his life, and of the woman, sorry to let him go, meet in the folds of the hangings, the woman sighing as she presses his hand to her heart and so they part.

CHAPTER XLVI.

DISCORD ENDS; HEART'S-EASE AT LAST.

With quick steps and eager glances at the groups of gay revellers, whom he pa.s.ses with a few hurried words of greeting and thanks for their congratulations on his "hidden wife," he looks in vain for Vaura. At last, and his handsome face and mesmeric eyes are lit with happiness, her voice comes to him from a music-room. He pushes his way through the crowds, for poor Chancer has been doomed to disappointment in his wish to have this fair woman sing to him alone, for when the now full rich notes, now sweet to intoxication, of her mezzo-soprano voice fell on the air, the languid, sentimental or gay stayed their steps to listen.

Lionel has now reached the piano, and stands beside Lord Rivers, who leans on his arms, noting with critical and admiring eye Vaura's unequalled charms.

"Yes," was his mental verdict, "never saw more lovely bust and shoulders; then her throat, poise of her head, like a G.o.ddess, glorious eyes, lips full and velvety as a peach."

A warmer light comes to the large dark eyes and tender curves to the lips as the sweet singer meets the gaze of her betrothed husband. One look and he feels that the words are for him: "Thou can'st with _thy_ suns.h.i.+ne _only_ calm this tempest of my heart."

More than one man were at one with Lord Rivers and Chancer in feeling the advent of Trevalyon to be extremely inopportune, when at the closing words he drew nearer, and Vaura, with her own bewildering smile, allowed him to carry her off. Just as they move away Everly hurried towards them, handing to Vaura a tiny three-cornered note, with a whispered "from Blanche," and he was gone. The recipient, glancing in the direction, sees in the distance the pink eyes and wee mouse-face peering through the crowd and gesticulating distinctly to Vaura to "read at once." Her written words were:

"Bid Sir Lionel take you to the north tower instanter; it's all O.K., warm as toast and lighted, so the ghosts won't have a show; but you will. Such a picnic! As soon as I can tire out, Sir Peter in our waltz I'll be on hand. B. EVERLY."

"Well, darling, what say you?" and the handsome Saxon head is bent for her reply.

"Yes, Lion, dear, and at once. It just occurs to me it may throw some light on a mysterious conversation I overheard in the library, and which the excitement of the night had well nigh caused me to forget."

"Indeed; then we shall hasten, love."

And turning their steps in the direction of the tower, first through corridors bright with the light from myriads of gas jets, which lit up Vaura's warm beauty and the brown sheen of her hair, followed by admiring, loving, or envious eyes, they now reach the more dimly-lighted halls, and turn into one at the foot of the spiral staircase, which they ascend slowly, Lionel's arm around his fair companion, her trail skirts thrown over her left arm. The stairway is lighted as Blanche had said.

"Not even a ghost, my own," and his face is bent to hers.

"Only one of a past longing, dearest; how I longed for you in the tower of St. Peter's. Oh! the view from the top, Lion."

"I know it well, love; but say you missed me, my love, ascending with yours, even this arm supporting you."

"I did dearest, even there, and you know it well, as also I longed for the sympathy of heart to heart, soul to soul in a view which lifts one to the heavens, and would take a poet to describe."

"My own feelings, love; the majesty of the view, and from such a height, overpowers one. Yes, sweet; dual solitude, as now, is paradise. Do the stairs fatigue you, my own?"

"No, Lion," and for a moment they stand still, his arm around her. The soft white hands draw his face near her own, "no, darling," and the sweet tones are a whisper, "'tis only the languor of intense happiness; in ecstatic moments, as now, one feels so."

For answer his lips press hers in a long kiss, and she is taken up in his strong arms and not loosed until the ascent is made and the octagon room reached; there he leads her to a seat, and throws himself on a cus.h.i.+on at her feet.

"What a Hercules I am about to bestow my fair person upon," she said, gaily, "for I am no light weight for a maiden. Ah! poor Guy; that reminds me, darling, I have something to tell you which--"

"Which will have to wait until you are my own dear wife, for," and his head is wearily laid on her knees, "I can wait no longer. You know, Vaura, dear, what my life has been, since as a little fellow in jacket and frilled collar, a child of about seven, my father was deserted by her to whom he had trusted his name and the honour of our house. But I cannot speak of it, it brings my poor half-crazed father back to earth, and I see him again before me, a victim to his trust in a woman. Then, my storm-tossed life; living now wholly for a pleasure that palled upon me, again, losing myself in dreams of what my life might have been with a loving wife, part of myself, making me a more perfect man by her sympathy in a oneness of thought, for you know, beloved, I could never have loved a woman who, for love of me, or because I had moulded her character, had adopted my views of life. No, woman is too fickle for that. I, in meeting your inner self, for we nearly all have those inner thoughts, life, and aspirations, in you, I know, our natures are akin, we can when we will, and just as our mood is, talk or be silent; look into life more closely, or only at its seeming; discuss and try to solve old, deep, and almost insoluble questions that, in our inner life, have puzzled us more than once, my own, or my bright twin-spirit of the morn," he added, brightening. "We can only see and look no further (when our mood is so) than from the cloudless sky to the sunbeams or starlight reflected in our own eyes.

Yes, beloved, I have earned my rest; my spirit has at last found its mate. You will make my life perfect, love, by giving yourself to me.

To-morrow, come down quietly to the rectory, our old friend will make us one. My place at the north is lonely without us; say yes, sweet?"

"In one little week, Lion, I shall have you here all the time. It will be bliss for us, after your unrest and mine; for you if you were obliged to leave here for any reason that may develop," and a look of startled anxiety comes to the lovely face, "but, no; she would never leave him; another flash of thought comes to me, darling, of the 'mysterious conversation' I spoke to you of, but it cannot have had any real meaning. I shall again banish the dreadful thought."

"Do, beloved; it has been a trying night for all of us," and he rises from the cus.h.i.+oned seat, and seating himself beside her draws the dear head to his chest.