A Singer from the Sea Part 3

"I thought not. Well, you see, sir, your dangling about my house keeps honest men outside, and I would be obliged to you, sir--in fact, sir, I require you at once to make Miss Tresham understand that your protestations are lies--simple and straightforward lies, sir. I insist on your telling her that your love-making is your amus.e.m.e.nt and girls' hearts the p.a.w.ns with which you play. You will tell her that you are a scoundrel, sir! And when you have explained yourself to Miss Tresham, you had better give the same information to Miss Trelawny, and to Miss Rose Trefuses, and to that poor little sewing-girl you practise your recitations on. Sir, I have the greatest contempt for you, and when you have spoken to Miss Tresham, you will leave my house and come here no more."

"It will give me pleasure to obey you, sir."

With these words he turned from the contemptuous old man, and in a hurried, angry mood sought Elizabeth in her usual sitting-room.

She opened her eyes as he opened the door and looked at him. Then she rose and went toward him. He waved her away imperatively and said:

"No, Elizabeth! No! I have no caress for you to-day! I do not think I shall ever feel lovingly to you again. Why did you tell your father anything? I thought our love was a secret, sacred affair. When I am brought to catechism about my heart matters, I shut my heart close. I am not to be hectored and frightened into marrying any woman."

"Will you remember whose presence you are in?"

"If you wanted to be my wife----"

"I do not want to be your wife."

"If you loved me in the least----"

"I do not love you in the least."

"I shall come here no more. O Elizabeth! Only to think!"

"I am glad you come here no more. I see that you judge the honour and fulness of my heart by the infidelity and emptiness of your own. Go, sir, and remember, you discard not me--I discard you."

Thus speaking she pa.s.sed him haughtily, and he put out his hand as if to detain her, but she gathered her drapery close and so left him. Mr.

Tresham heard her footsteps and softly opened the door of his library.

"Come in here, Elizabeth," he said with some tenderness.

"I have seen him."

"And he brought you the news of his own dishonour. Let him go. He is as weak as a bent flax-stalk, and to be weak is to be wicked. Bury your disappointment in your heart, do not even tell Denas--girls talk to their mothers and mothers talk to all and sundry. Turn your face to Burrell Court now--it is a fair fortune."

"And it may be a good thing for poor Roland."

"It may. A respectable position and a certain income is often salvation for a man. Write to Mr. Burrell at once, and send the letter by the gardener."

That was an easy direction to give, but Elizabeth did not find it easy to carry out. She wrote half-a-dozen letters, and none of them was satisfactory. So she finally asked her lover to call and see her at seven o'clock that evening. And it was very natural that, in the stress of such an important decision, the visit of Denas and their intention of dressing the altar should be forgotten. It was a kind of unpleasant surprise to her when Denas came and she remembered the obligation. Of course she could not now refuse to fulfil it. The offering was surely to G.o.d, and no relation between herself and the rector could interfere with it. But it was a great trial. She said she had a headache, and perhaps that complaint as well as any other defined the hurt and shock she had received.

Denas wondered at Elizabeth's want of interest. She did not superintend as usual the cutting of the flowers, so carefully nursed and saved for this occasion; and though she went to the church with Denas and really did her best to make a heart offering with her Easter wreaths, the effort was evident. Her work lacked the joyous enthusiasm which had always distinguished Elizabeth's church duties.

The rector pointedly ignored her, and she felt keenly the curious, and in some cases the not kindly, glances of the other Easter handmaidens.

In such celebrations she had always been put first; she was now last--rather, she was nowhere. It would have been hard to bear had she not known what a triumph she held in abeyance. For Mr. Burrell was the patron of St. Penfer's church; he had given its fine chime of bells and renovated its ancient pews of black oak. The new organ had been his last Christmas gift to the parish, and out of his purse mainly had come the new school buildings. The rector might ignore Miss Tresham, but she smiled to herself when she reflected on the salaams he would yet make to Mrs. Robert Burrell.

Now, Denas was not more prudent than young girls usually are. She saw that there was trouble, and she spoke of it. She saw Elizabeth was slighted, and she resented it. It was but natural under such circ.u.mstances that the church duty was made as short as possible; and it was just as natural that Elizabeth should endeavour to restore her self-respect by a confidential revelation of the great matrimonial offer she had received. And perhaps she did nothing unwomanly in leaving Denas freedom to suppose the rector's insolent indifference the fruit of his jealousy and disappointment.

In the midst of these pleasant confidences Roland unexpectedly entered. He had written positively that he was not coming. And then here he was. "I thought I could not borrow for the trip, but I managed it," he said with the bland satisfaction of a man who feels that he has accomplished a praiseworthy action. For once Elizabeth was not quite pleased at his visit. She would rather it had not occurred at such an important crisis of her life. She was somewhat afraid of Roland's enthusiasms and rapid friends.h.i.+ps, and it was not unlikely that his first conception of Mr. Burrell's alliance would be "a good person to borrow money from."

Also she wished time to dress herself carefully and solitude to get the inner woman under control. After five o'clock Denas and Roland were both in her way. They were at the piano singing as complacently and deliberately as if the coming of her future husband was an event that could slip into and fit into any phase of ordinary life. It was a strange, wonderful thing to her, something so sacred and personal she could not bear to think of discussing it while Roland laughed and Denas sang. It was not an every-day event and she would not have it made one.

She knew her father would not interfere, and she knew one way in which to rid herself of Denas and Roland. Naturally she took it. A little after six she said: "I have a headache, Roland, and shall not walk to-night. Will you take Denas safely down the cliff?"

Roland was delighted, and Denas was no more afraid of the gay fellow than the moth is of the candle. She was pleasantly excited by the idea of a walk all alone with Roland. She wondered what he would say to her: if he would venture to give voice to the inarticulate love-making of the last two years--to all that he had looked when she sang to him--to all that he meant by the soft, prolonged pressure of her hand and by that one sweet stolen kiss which he had claimed for Christmas'

sake.

They walked a little apart and very silently until they came into the glades of the cliff-breast. Then, suddenly, without word or warning, Roland took Denas in his arms and kissed her. "Denas! sweet Denas!" he cried, and the wrong was so quickly, so impulsively committed that for a moment Denas was pa.s.sive under it. Then with flaming cheeks she freed herself from his embrace. "Mr. Tresham, you must go back," she said. "I can walk no further with you. Why were you so rude to me?"

"I am not rude, Denas, and I will not go back. After waiting two years for this opportunity, do you think I will give it up? And I will not let you call me Mr. Tresham. To you I am Roland. Say it here in my arms, dear, lovely Denas! Do not turn away from me. You cannot go back without telling Elizabeth, and I swear you shall not go forward until you forgive me. Come, Denas, sweet, forgive me!" He held her hands, he kissed her hands, and would not release the girl, who, as she listened to his rapid, eager pleading, became more and more disposed to tenderness. He was telling the story no one could better tell than Roland Tresham. His eyes, his lips, his smile, his caressing att.i.tudes, all went with his eager words, his enthusiastic admiration, his pa.s.sionate a.s.sertion of his long-hidden affection.

And everything was in his favour. The lovely spring eve, the mystical twilight, the mellow flutings of the blackbirds and the vesper thrushes piping nothing new or strange, only the sweet old tune of love, the lift of the hills, the soft trinkling of hidden brooks, the scent of violets at their feet and of the fresh leaves above them--all the magic of the young year and of young love made the delicious story Roland had been longing to tell and the innocent heart of Denas fearing and longing to hear very easy to interpret--very easy to understand.

Listening, and then refusing to listen; yielding a little, and then drawing back again, Denas nevertheless heard Roland's whole sweet confession. She was taught to believe that he had loved her from their first meeting; taught to believe and half-made to acknowledge that she had not been indifferent to him. She was under almost irresistible influences, and she did not think of others which might have counteracted them. Even Elizabeth's revelation to her of her own splendid matrimonial hopes was favourable to Roland's arguments; for if it was a thing for congratulating and rejoicing that Elizabeth should marry a man so much richer than herself, where was it wrong for Denas to love one supposed to be socially and financially her superior?

Before they were half-way to the s.h.i.+ngle Roland felt that he had won.

The conviction gave him a new kind of power--the power all women delight to acknowledge; the sweet dictation, the loving tyranny that claims every thought of the beloved. Roland told Denas she must not dare to remember anyone but him; he would feel it and know it if she did. She promised this readily. She must not tell Elizabeth. Elizabeth was unreasonable, she was even jealous of everything concerning her brother; she would have a hundred objections; she would influence his father unfavourably; she would do all she could to prevent their seeing each other, etc., etc. And where a man pleads, one woman is readily persuaded against another. But Denas was much harder to persuade where the article of secrecy touched her father and mother.

Her conscience, uneasy for some time, told her positively at this point that deception was wicked and dangerous. Roland could not win from her a promise in this direction. But he was not afraid--he was sure he could trust to her love and her desire to please him.

One of the cruellest things about a wrong love is that it delights in tangles and hidden ways; that it teaches and practises deceit from its first inception; that its earliest efforts are toward destroying all older and more sacred attachments. Roland was not willing to take the hand of Denas in the face of the world and say: "This is my beloved wife." Yet for the secret pleasure of his secret love, he expected Denas to wrong father-love and mother-love and to deceive day by day the friend and the companion who had been so kind and so fairly loyal to her.

No wonder John Penelles hated him instinctively. John's soul needed but a glimpse of the lovers sauntering down the narrow cliff-path to apprehend the beginning of sorrows. Instantaneous as the glimpse was, it explained to him the restless, angry, fearful feeling that had driven him from his own cottage to the place appointed by destiny for the revelation of his child's danger and of his own admonition.

He was glad that he had obeyed the spiritual order; whatever power had warned him had done him service. It is true the fond a.s.surances of Denas had somewhat pacified his suspicions, but he was not altogether satisfied. When Denas declared that Roland had not made love to her, John felt certain that the girl was in some measure deceiving him--perhaps deceiving herself; for he could not imagine her to be guilty of a deliberate lie. Alas! lying is the vital air of secret love, and a girl must needs lie who hides from her parents the object and the course of her affections. Still, when he thought of her arms around his neck, of her cheek against his cheek, of her a.s.sertion that "Denas loved no one better than her father and mother," he felt it a kind of disloyalty to his child to altogether doubt her. He believed that Denas believed in herself. Well, then, he must try and trust her as far and as long as it was possible.

And Joan trusted her daughter--she scouted the idea of Denas doing anything that was outside her mother's approval. She told John that his fear was nothing but the natural conceit of men; they thought a woman could not be with one of their s.e.x and not be ready to sacrifice her own life and the lives of all her kinsfolk for him. "It be such puddling folly to start with," she said indignantly; "talking about Denas being false to her father and mother! 'Tis a doleful, dismal, ghastly bit of cowardice, John. Dreadful! aw, dreadful!"

Then John was silent, but he communed with his own heart. Joan had not seen Roland and Denas as he had seen them; no one had troubled Joan as he had been troubled. For something often gives to a loving heart a kind of prescience, when it may be used for wise and saving ends; and John Penelles divined the angry trend of Roland's thoughts, though it was impossible for him to antic.i.p.ate the special form that trend would take.

Roland had indeed been made furiously angry at the interference between himself and Denas. "I spoke pleasantly to the old fisher, and he was as rude as could be. Rude to me! Jove! I'll teach him the value of good manners to his betters."

He sat down on a lichen-covered rock, lit a cigar, and began to think.

His personal dignity had been deeply wounded; his pride of petty caste trod upon. He, a banker's son, had been snubbed by a common fisherman! "He took Denas from me as if I was going to kill her, body and soul. He deserves all he suspected me of." And as these and similar thoughts pa.s.sed through Roland's mind he was not at all handsome; his face looked dark and drawn and marked all over with the characters sin writes through long late hours of selfish revelry and riot.

But however his angry thoughts wandered, they always came back to the slight of himself personally--to the failure of Penelles to appreciate the honour he was doing him in wooing his daughter. And if the devil wishes to enter easily a man or a woman, he finds no door so wide and so easy of access as the door of wounded vanity and wounded self-esteem.

Roland's first impulse was to make Denas pay her father's debt. "I will never speak to her again. Common little fisher-girl! I will teach her that gentlemen are to be used like gentlemen. Why did she not speak up to her father? She stood there without a word and let him snub me. The idea!" These exclamations were, however, only the quick, unreasoning pa.s.sion of the animal; when Roland had calmed himself with tobacco, he felt how primitive and foolish they were. His reflections were then of a different character; they began to flow steadily into a channel they had often wandered in, though hitherto without distinct purpose.

"After all, I like the girl. She has a kind of nixie, tantalising, bewitching charm that would drive a crowd mad. She has a fresh, sympathetic voice, penetrating, too, as a clarion. Her folk-songs and her sea-songs go down to the bottom of a man's heart and into every corner of it. Now, if I could get her to London and have her taught how to manage her voice and face and person, if I had her taught how to dance--Jove! there is a fortune in it! Dressed in a fancy fisher costume, singing the casting songs and the boat songs--the calls and takes she knows so well--why, she would make a gas-lit theatre seem like the great ocean, and men would see the white-sailed s.h.i.+ps go marching by, and the fis.h.i.+ng cobbles, and the wide nets full of gleaming fish, and--and, by Jove! they would go frantic with delight.

They would be at her feet. She would be the idol of London. She would sing full pockets empty. I should have all my desires, and now I have so few of them. What a prospect! But I'll reach it--I'll reach it, and all the fishers in St. Penfer's shall not hinder me!"

He thought his plans over again, and then it was dark and he rose up to return home; but as he shook himself into the proper fit of his clothes and settled his hat at the correct angle, he laughed vauntingly and said:

"I shall be even with you, John Penelles, before next Easter. I was not good enough for Denas, was I not? Well, she is going to work for me and for my pleasure and profit, John Penelles; going to make money for me to spend, John Penelles. My beautiful fisher-maid! I dare be bound she is dreaming of me now. Women! women! women! What dear little fools they are, to be sure!"

He was quite excited and quite good-tempered now. A new plan was like a new fortune to Roland. He never took into consideration the contrariness of circ.u.mstances and of opposing human elements. His plans were perfect from his own standpoint; the standpoint of other people was out of his consideration. Never before had he conceived so clever a scheme for getting a livelihood made for him. There was really n.o.body but Denas to interfere with any of his arrangements, and Denas was under his control and could be made more so. This night he felt positive that he had "hit the very thing at last."

He reached home late, but in exuberant spirits. Elizabeth was waiting for him. She was beautifully dressed, and in a moment he saw upon her hand the flash of large and perfect diamonds. "They were mother's, I suppose, and I have as much right--yes, more right--to them than she has." This was his first thought, but he did not express it. There was an air about Elizabeth that was quite new to him; he was curious and full of expectation as he seated himself beside her. She shook her head in a reproving manner.

"You have been making love to Denas. I see it in your eyes, Roland.

And you promised me you never would."

"Upon my honour, Elizabeth. We met the old fisher Penelles a long way up the cliff and he took her from me. Talking of making love--pray, what have you been doing? I thought you had a headache."