CHAPTER VII.
TWO WOMEN.
"You want to hear about Edwin Urquhart. Well, you shall, but first Ipromise you that I shall talk much less of him than of another person.Why? because it is on account of this other person that I hate him, andsolely because of this other person that I avenge myself, or seek toassist others in avenging the justice you say he has outraged.
"We were friends from boyhood. Reared in the same town and under thesame influences, there was a community of interests between us thatthrew us together and made us what is called friends. But I never likedhim. That is, I never felt a confidence in him which is essential to amutual understanding. And, though I accepted his companionship, and wasmuch with him at the most critical time of my life, I always kept oneside, and that the better side, of my nature closed to him.
"He was a gentleman with no expectations; I the inheritor of a smallfortune that made my friendship of temporary use to him, even if it didnot offer him much to rely on in the future. We lived, he with an unclewho was ready to throw him off the moment he was assured that he wouldnot marry one of his daughters, and I in my own house, which, if nomanor, was at least my own, and for the present free from debt. I myselfthought that Urquhart intended to marry one of the girls to whom I havejust alluded. But it seems that he never meant to do this, and onlyencouraged his uncle to think so because he was not yet ready to give upthe shelter he enjoyed with him. But of this, as I say, I was ignorant,and was consequently very much astonished when, one nightfall, inpassing the great Dudleigh place, he remarked:
"'How would you like to drink a glass with me in yonder? Better than inthe Fairfax kitchen, eh?'
"I thought he was joking. ''Tis a fine old house,' I observed. 'No doubtits wines are good. But it is no tavern, and I question if Miss Dudleighwould make either of us very welcome.'
"'You do! Then you don't know Miss Dudleigh,' he vaunted, with a proudswelling of his person, and a lift of his head that almost took mybreath away. For, though he was a handsome fellow--too handsome for aman no worthier than he--I should no more have presumed to haveassociated him in my thoughts with Miss Dudleigh than if he had been aworker in her fields. Not so much because she was rich--very rich forthat day and place--or that her family was an old one, and his but amushroom stock, as that she was a being of the gentlest instincts andthe purest thoughts, while he was what you may have gathered from mywords--vain, coarse, cowardly and mean; an abject cur beside her, whowas, and is, one of the sweetest women the sun ever shone upon."
At this expression of admiration on the part of the hermit, which provedhim to be in entire ignorance of the crime which had been perpetratedagainst this woman, I found myself struck so aghast that I could notforbear showing it. But he was too engrossed in his reminiscences tonotice my emotion, and presently continued his story by saying:
"I probably betrayed my astonishment to Urquhart, for he gave a greatlaugh, and forced me about toward the gates.
"'We will not be turned out,' he said. 'Let us go in and pay ourrespects.'
"'But,' I stammered.
"'Oh, it's all right,' he pursued. 'The fair lady is of age and has theprivilege of choosing her future husband. I shall live in clover, eh?Well, it is time I lived in something. I have had a hard enough time ofit so far, for a none too homely fellow.'
"I was overwhelmed; more than that, I was sickened by these words, whoseimport I understood only too well. Not that I had any special interestin Miss Dudleigh; indeed, I hardly knew her; but any such woman inspiresrespect, and I could not think of her as allied to this man without aspasm of revolt that almost amounted to fear.
"'You are going to marry her, this white rose!' I exclaimed. 'I shouldas soon have thought of your marrying a princess of the royal house. Ihope you appreciate your unbounded good fortune.'
"He pointed to the great chimneys and imposing facade of the finestructure before us. 'Do you think I am so blind as not to know theadvantage of being the master in a house like that? You must not thinkme quite a fool if I am not as clever a fellow as you are. Remember thatI am a poorer one and like my ease better.'
"'But Miss Dudleigh?'
"'Oh, she's a trifle peaked and dull, but she's fond and not tooexacting.'
"I was angry, but had no excuse for showing it. Righteous indignation hecould never have understood, and to have provoked a quarrel without anydefinite end in view would have been folly. I remained silent,therefore, but my heart burned within me.
"It had not lost its heat when we entered her house, and when my eyesfell upon her seated at her spinet in front of a latticed window thatbrought out her gentle figure in all its sweet simplicity, I felt likeclutching, and flinging back over the threshold, which his desecratingfoot should never have crossed, the hollow-hearted being at my side, whocould neither see her beauty nor estimate the worth of her innocentaffection.
"There was an aunt or some such relative in the room with her, but thisdid not hinder the glad smile from rising to her lips as she saw us--orrather him, for she hardly seemed to notice my presence. I learnedafterward that this aunt had been greatly instrumental in bringing theseincongruous natures together; that for reasons of her own, which I havenever attempted to fathom, she thought Edwin Urquhart the best husbandthat her niece could have, and not only introduced him into the house,but stood so much his friend during the first days of his courtship thatshe gradually imparted to her niece her own enthusiasm, till the poorgirl saw--or thought she saw--the ideal of her dreams in the base andshallow being whom I called my friend.
"However that may be, she certainly rose from her spinet that night in apretty confusion that made her absolutely lovely, and advancing with themingled dignity of the heiress and the tender bashfulness of the maidenin the presence of him she loved, she tendered us a courtesy whose graceput me out of ease with myself, so much it expressed the manners ofpeople removed from the sphere in which it had hitherto been my lot tomove.
"But Urquhart showed no embarrassment. His fine figure--he hadthat--bent forward with the most courtly of bows, and after theintroduction of my humble self to her notice, he entered into aconversation which, if shallow, was at least bright, and for the momentinteresting. As I had no wish to talk, I gave myself up to watching her,and came away at last more fixed than ever in my belief of her extremeworthiness and of his extreme presumption in thinking of calling soperfect a creature his.
"'Would to God she was as poor as Janet Fairfax,' I thought to myself.'Then she would never have attracted his attention, and might have knownwhat happiness was with some man who could appreciate her. Now she isdoomed, and being fatherless and motherless, will rush on to her fate,and no one can stop her.'
"Thus I thought, and thus I continued to think as chance and Urquhart'sstubborn will led me more and more to her house, and within the radiusof her gentle influence. But my thoughts never went further. I never sawher, even in my dreams, fostered by me, or soothed of an old grief by mylove and affection. For though she was a dainty and gracious being, withbeauty enough to delight the eyes and warm the heart, she was not theone destined to move me, and awake the tumultuous passions that laydormant in my own scarcely understood nature. Urquhart, therefore, wasnot acting unwisely in taking me there so often, though, if I could haveforeseen what was likely to be the result of those visits, I should haveleaped from my house's roof on to the stones below before I had passedagain under those fatal portals.
"And yet--would I? Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it fromexperience or the monotony of a commonplace existence that we quickestflee? A man with passions like mine must love; and if that love comesgirt with flame and mysterious death, he still must embrace it, and riseand fall as the destinies will.
"But I talk riddles. I have not yet told you of her; and yet speak offire and death. I will try to be more coherent, if only to show that theyears have brought me some mastery over myself. One day--it was a fallday and beautiful as limpid sunshine and a world of yellowing woodscould make it--I went to Miss
Dudleigh's house to apologize for myfriend, who had wished to improve the gorgeous sunshine elsewhere.
"I had by this time lost all fear of her, as well as of her rich andspacious surroundings, and passed through the hospitable door and alongthe wide halls to the especial room in which we were wont to find her,with that freedom engendered by an intimacy as cordial as it wassincere. It was the room where first I had seen her, the room with thewide latticed window at the back, and the spinet beneath it, and the oldcarven chair of oak in which her white-clad form had always looked soethereal; and I entered it smiling, expecting to see her delicate figurerise from the window, and advance toward me with that look of surpriseand possible disappointment which the absence of Urquhart would be aptto arouse in this too loving nature. But the room was empty and thespinet closed, and I was about turning to find a servant, when I felt aninfluence stealing over me so subtile and so peculiar that I stoodpetrified and enthralled, hardly knowing if it were music that held mespell-bound or some unknown and subduing perfume, that, filling mysenses, worked upon my brain, and made me feel like a man transported ata breath from the land of reality into a land of dreams.
"So potent the spell, so inexplicable its action, that minutes may haveelapsed before I wrenched myself free from its power and looked to seewhat it was that so moved me. When I did, I found myself at a loss toexplain it. Whether it was music or perfume, or just the emanation froman intense personality, I have never determined. I only know that when Iturned, I saw standing before me, in an attitude of waiting, a woman ofsuch marvelous attractions, and yet of an order of beauty so bizarre andout of keeping with the times and the place in which she stood, that Iforgot to question everything but my own sanity and the reality of avision so unprecedented in all my experience. I therefore simply stoodlike her, speechless and lost, and only came to myself when the figurebefore me suddenly melted from a statue into a woman, and, with a deepand graceful courtesy, almost daring in its abandonment, said:
"'You must be Master Felt, I take it. Master Urquhart would never be sothrown off his balance by a simple girl like me.'
"There are voices that pierce like arrows and sink deep into the heart,which closes over their sweetness forever. So it was with this voice.From its first sound to its last it held me enthralled, and had sheshown but half the beauty she did, those accents of hers would have mademe her slave. As it was, I was more than her slave. I instantly becameall and everything to her. I breathed but as she breathed, and in theabsorbing delight which from that moment took hold of me I lost allsense of the proprieties and conventionalities of social intercourse,and only thought of drinking in at one draught the strange andmysterious loveliness which I saw revealed before me.
"She was not a tall woman, no taller than Miss Dudleigh. Nor was she ofmarked carriage or build. Her form, indeed, seemed only made to expresssuppleness and passion, and was as speaking in its slight proportions asif it had breathed forth the nobler attributes of majesty and strength.Her dress was dark, and clung to every curve with a loving persistencebewildering in its effect upon an eye like mine. Upon the bust, and justbelow the white throat, burned a mass of gorgeous flowers as ruddy aswine; and from one delicate hand a long vine trailed to the floor. Butit was in her face that her power lay; in her eyes possibly, though Iscarcely think so, for there were curves to her lips such as I havenever seen in any other, and a delicate turn to her nostril that attimes made me feel as if she were breathing fire. Her skin was pale, herforehead broad and low, her nose straight, and her lips of a brilliantvermilion. I, however, saw only her eyes, though I may have beeninfluenced by the rest of her bewildering physiognomy; they were solarge, so changeful, so full of alternating flames and languor, soindeterminate in color, and yet so persistent in their effect upon theeye and the feelings. Looking at them, I swore she was an anomaly.Gazing into them, I resolved that she was this only because she letherself be natural and sought to smother none of the fires which hadbeen enkindled by a bountiful nature within her soul.
"While I was reasoning thus, she made me another mock courtesy, andexplaining her presence by saying she was a cousin of Miss Dudleigh's,ventured to remark that, if Master Felt would be kind enough to statehis errand, she would be glad to carry it to Miss Dudleigh. I answeredconfusedly, but with a fervor she could not fail to understand, andfollowing up this effort by another, led her into a conversation inwhich my responses gradually became such as she should expect from agentleman and an equal.
"For with her, notwithstanding her beauty, and the sense of splendor andluxury which breathed from her mysterious presence, I never felt thatsense of personal inferiority I experienced at first with Miss Dudleigh.Whether I recognized then, as now, the lack of those high qualitieswhich lift one mortal above another, I do not know. I am only certainthat, while I regarded her as a woman to be obeyed, to be loved, to befollowed through life, through death, into whatsoever regions of horror,danger, and pain she might lead me, I never looked upon her as a beingout of my world or beyond my reach, except so far as her caprice mightcarry her.
"It was therefore with the fixed determination to force from her some ofthe interest she had awakened in me, that I grasped at this firstopportunity of conversation; and in spite of her unrest--she did notwant to linger--held her to the spot till I had made her feel that a manhad come into her life whose will meant something, and to whom, if shedid not subdue the light of her glances, she must give account for everyadded throb she caused to beat in his proud heart.
"This done I let her go, for Miss Dudleigh was not well and needed her,and the door closed behind her mysterious smile, and the sound of hersteps died out in the hall, and in fancy only could I behold her supple,dark-clad form go up the broad staircase, projecting itself now againstthe golden daylight falling through one window, and now against theclustering vines that screened another, till she disappeared in regionsof which I knew nothing and whither even my daring imagination presumednot to follow. And the vision never left my eyes nor her form my heart,and I went out in my turn, a burning, eager, determined man, where in ashort half hour before I had entered cold and self-satisfied, withouthope and without exaltation.
"This was the beginning. In a week the earth and sky held nothing for mebut that woman. Her name, which I had not learned at our firstinterview, was Marah Leighton--a fitting watch-word for a struggle thatcould terminate only with my life! For I had got to the pass that thiswoman must be mine. I would have her for my wife or see her dead; sheshould never leave the town with another. Yes; homely as I was, withoutrecommendation of family, or more means than enough to keep a wife fromwant, I boldly entered upon this determination, and in the face of somedozen lovers, that at the first revelation of her beauty began to swarmabout her steps, pressed my claims and pushed forward my suit till Ifinally gained a hearing, and after that a promise, which, if vague, wasmore than any of her other lovers could boast of, or why did they allgradually withdraw from the struggle, leaving me alone in my homage?
"The uncertainties of her position (she was an orphan and dependent uponMiss Dudleigh for subsistence) had added greatly to my tenderness forher. It also added to my hope. For if I were poor, she was poorer, andought to find in the managing of my humble home a satisfaction she couldnot experience in the enjoyment of a relative's bounty, even if thatrelative was a woman like Honora Dudleigh. And yet one doubts anexultant happiness; and as I grew to know her better, I realized that ifI ever did succeed in making her mine, I must see to it that myfortunes bettered, as she would never be happy as a poor man's wife,even if that man brought her independence and love.
"She loved splendor, she loved distinction, she loved the frivolities oflife. Not with a childish pleasure or even a girlish enthusiasm, butwith a woman's strong and determined spirit. I have seen her pacethrough and through those great halls just for the pleasure of realizingtheir spaciousness; and though the sight made my heart cringe, I haveadmired her step and the poise of her head as much as if she had beenthe queen of it all, and I her hum
blest vassal. Then her luxury! Itshowed as plainly in her poverty as it could have done in wealth. If itwere flowers she handled, it was as a goddess would handle them. Nonewere too beautiful, or too costly, or too rare for her restless fingersto pluck, or her dainty feet to tread on. Had she possessed jewels, shewould have worn them like roses, and flung them away almost as freely ifthey had displeased her or she had grown weary of them. Love was to hera jewel, and she wore it just now because it suited her fancy to do so;but would not the day come when she would grow tired of it or demandanother, and so fling it and me to the dogs?
"I did not ask. I was permitted to walk at her side, and pay her mycourt, and now and then, when the humor took her, to press her hand ordrop a kiss upon the rosy palm; and while I could do this, was it for meto question a future which seemed more likely to hold fewer pleasuresthan more?
"But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw mydevotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew thesmallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman Iexpected to share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for herwoman's intuition must have told her, what observation had as yet failedto tell me, that there was trouble in the air, and that Marah needed aprotector.
"The day that I first recognized this fact made an era in my life. I hadbeen so happy, so at ease with myself, so sure of her growing confidenceand of my coming happiness. That I had cause for this, the conduct ofher friends and the jealousy of her lovers seemed to prove. Though shegave no visible token of her regard, she clung to me as to a support,and allowed my passion the constant feast of her presence and thestimulation of her voice.
"Her enchantments, and they were innumerable, were never spared me, nordid she stint herself of a smile that could allure, nor of a glance thatcould arouse or perplex.
"I was happy, and questioned only the extent of my patience, which Ifelt fast giving way as the preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriageproceeded without my seeing any immediate prospect of my own. You canrealize, then, the maddening nature of the shock which I received when,coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I beheld her facedisappearing through one of the doorways, with that look upon it which Ihad always felt was natural to it, but which no passion of mine had everbeen able to evoke, and then perceived in the shadow from which she hadjust glided, Edwin Urquhart, pale as excessive feeling could make him,and so shaken by the first real emotion which had ever probably movedhis selfish soul that he not only failed to see me when I advanced, buthastened by me, and away into the solitudes of the garden, withoutnoticing my existence, or honoring with a reply the words of wrath andconfusion which, in my misery and despair, I threw after him."