Leavenworth Case, The (33 page)

"You don't know what to make of me!" she cried, throwing aside her cloak, and revealing herself in the full splendor of evening attire. "I don't know what to make of myself. Though it seems folly, I felt that I must run away and tell some one that a certain pair of eyes have been looking into mine, and that for the first time in my life I feel myself a woman as well as a queen." And with a glance in which coyness struggled with pride, she gathered up her cloak around her, and laughingly cried:

"Have you had a visit from a flying sprite? Has one little ray of moonlight found its way into your prison for a wee moment, with Mary's laugh and Mary's snowy silk and flashing diamonds? Say!" and she patted my cheek, and smiled so bewilderingly, that even now, with all the dull horror of these after-events crowding upon me, I cannot but feel something like tears spring to my eyes at the thought of it.

"And so the Prince has come for you?" I whispered, alluding to a story I had told her the last time she had visited me; a story in which a girl, who had waited all her life in rags and degradation for the lordly knight who was to raise her from a hovel to a throne, died just as her one lover, an honest peasant-lad whom she had discarded in her pride, arrived at her door with the fortune he had spent all his days in amassing for her sake.

But at this she flushed, and drew back towards the door. "I don't know; I am afraid not. I—I don't think anything about that. Princes are not so easily won," she murmured.

"What! are you going?" I said, "and alone? Let me accompany you."

But she only shook her fairy head, and replied: "No, no; that would be spoiling the romance, indeed. I have come upon you like a sprite, and like a sprite I will go." And, flashing like the moonbeam she was, she glided out into the night, and floated away down the street.

When she next came, I observed a feverish excitement in her manner, which assured me, even plainer than the coy sweetness displayed in our last interview, that her heart had been touched by her lover's attentions. Indeed, she hinted as much before she left, saying in a melancholy tone, when I had ended my story in the usual happy way, with kisses and marriage, "I shall never marry!" finishing the exclamation with a long-drawn sigh, that somehow emboldened me to say, perhaps because I knew she had no mother:

"And why? What reason can there be for such rosy lips saying their possessor will never marry?"

She gave me one quick look, and then dropped her eyes. I feared I had offended her, and was feeling very humble, when she suddenly replied, in an even but low tone, "I said I should never marry, because the one man who pleases me can never be my husband."

All the hidden romance in my nature started at once into life. "Why not? What do you mean? Tell me."

"There is nothing to tell," said she; "only I have been so weak as to"—she would not say, fall in love, she was a proud woman— "admire a man whom my uncle will never allow me to marry."

And she rose as if to go; but I drew her back. "Whom your uncle will not allow you to marry!" I repeated. "Why? because he is poor?"

"No; uncle loves money, but not to such an extent as that. Besides, Mr. Clavering is not poor. He is the owner of a beautiful place in his own country—"

"Own country?" I interrupted. "Is he not an American?"

"No," she returned; "he is an Englishman."

I did not see why she need say that in just the way she did, but, supposing she was aggravated by some secret memory, went on to inquire: "Then what difficulty can there be? Isn't he—" I was going to say steady, but refrained.

"He is an Englishman," she emphasized in the same bitter tone as before. "In saying that, I say it all. Uncle will never let me marry an Englishman."

I looked at her in amazement. Such a puerile reason as this had never entered my mind.

"He has an absolute mania on the subject," resumed she. "I might as well ask him to allow me to drown myself as to marry an Englishman."

A woman of truer judgment than myself would have said: "Then, if that is so, why not discard from your breast all thought of him? Why dance with him, and talk to him, and let your admiration develop into love?" But I was all romance then, and, angry at a prejudice I could neither understand nor appreciate, I said:

"But that is mere tyranny! Why should he hate the English so? And why, if he does, should you feel yourself obliged to gratify him in a whim so unreasonable?"

"Why? Shall I tell you, auntie?" she said, flushing and looking away.

"Yes," I returned; "tell me everything."

"Well, then, if you want to know the worst of me, as you already know the best, I hate to incur my uncle's displeasure, because—because—I have always been brought up to regard myself as his heiress, and I know that if I were to marry contrary to his wishes, he would instantly change his mind, and leave me penniless."

"But," I cried, my romance a little dampened by this admission, "you tell me Mr. Clavering has enough to live upon, so you would not want; and if you love—"

Her violet eyes fairly flashed in her amazement.

"You don't understand," she said; "Mr. Clavering is not poor; but uncle is rich. I shall be a queen—" There she paused, trembling, and falling on my breast. "Oh, it sounds mercenary, I know, but it is the fault of my bringing up. I have been taught to worship money. I would be utterly lost without it. And yet"—her whole face softening with the light of another emotion, "I cannot say to Henry Clavering, 'Go! my prospects are dearer to me than you!' I cannot, oh, I cannot!"

"You love him, then?" said I, determined to get at the truth of the matter if possible.

She rose restlessly. "Isn't that a proof of love? If you knew me, you would say it was." And, turning, she took her stand before a picture that hung on the wall of my sitting-room.

"That looks like me," she said.

It was one of a pair of good photographs I possessed.

"Yes," I remarked, "that is why I prize it."

She did not seem to hear me; she was absorbed in gazing at the exquisite face before her. "That is a winning face," I heard her say. "Sweeter than mine. I wonder if she would ever hesitate between love and money. I do not believe she would," her own countenance growing gloomy and sad as she said so; "she would think only of the happiness she would confer; she is not hard like me. Eleanore herself would love this girl."

I think she had forgotten my presence, for at the mention of her cousin's name she turned quickly round with a half suspicious look, saying lightly:

"My dear old Mamma Hubbard looks horrified. She did not know she had such a very unromantic little wretch for a listener, when she was telling all those wonderful stories of Love slaying dragons, and living in caves, and walking over burning ploughshares as if they were tufts of spring grass?"

"No," I said, taking her with an irresistible impulse of admiring affection into my arms; "but if I had, it would have made no difference. I should still have talked about love, and of all it can do to make this weary workaday world sweet and delightful."

"Would you? Then you do not think me such a wretch?"

What could I say? I thought her the winsomest being in the world, and frankly told her so. Instantly she brightened into her very gayest self. Not that I thought then, much less do I think now, she partiallaly cared for my good opinion; but her nature demanded admiration, and unconsciously blossomed under it, as a flower under the sunshine.

"And you will still let me come and tell you how bad I am,—that is, if I go on being bad, as I doubtless shall to the end of the chapter? You will not turn me off?"

"I will never turn you off."

"Not if I should do a dreadful thing? Not if I should run away with my lover some fine night, and leave uncle to discover how his affectionate partiality had been requited?"

It was lightly said, and lightly meant, for she did not even wait for my reply. But its seed sank deep into our two hearts for all that. And for the next few days I spent my time in planning how I should manage, if it should ever fall to my lot to conduct to a successful issue so enthralling a piece of business as an elopement. You may imagine, then, how delighted I was, when one evening Hannah, this unhappy girl who is now lying dead under my roof, and who was occupying the position of lady's maid to Miss Mary Leavenworth at that time, came to my door with a note from her mistress, running thus:

"Have the loveliest story of the season ready for me tomorrow; and let the prince be as handsome as—as some one you have heard of, and the princess as foolish as your little yielding pet,

"MARY."

Which short note could only mean that she was engaged. But the next day did not bring me my Mary, nor the next, nor the next; and beyond hearing that Mr. Leavenworth had returned from his trip I received neither word nor token. Two more days dragged by, when, just as twilight set in, she came. It had been a week since I had seen her, but it might have been a year from the change I observed in her countenance and expression. I could scarcely greet her with any show of pleasure, she was so unlike her former self.

"You are disappointed, are you not?" said she, looking at me. "You expected revelations, whispered hopes, and all manner of sweet confidences; and you see, instead, a cold, bitter woman, who for the first time in your presence feels inclined to be reserved and uncommunicative."

"That is because you have had more to trouble than encourage you in your love," I returned, though not without a certain shrinking, caused more by her manner than words.

She did not reply to this, but rose and paced the floor, coldly at first, but afterwards with a certain degree of excitement that proved to be the prelude to a change in her manner; for, suddenly pausing, she turned to me and said: "Mr. Clavering has left R—, Mrs. Belden."

"Left!"

"Yes, my uncle commanded me to dismiss him, and I obeyed."

The work dropped from my hands, in my heartfelt disappointment. "Ah! then he knows of your engagement to Mr. Clavering?"

"Yes; he had not been in the house five minutes before Eleanore told him."

"Then she knew?"

"Yes," with a half sigh. "She could hardly help it. I was foolish enough to give her the cue in my first moment of joy and weakness. I did not think of the consequences; but I might have known. She is so conscientious."

"I do not call it conscientiousness to tell another's secrets," I returned.

"That is because you are not Eleanore."

Not having a reply for this, I said, "And so your uncle did not regard your engagement with favor?"

"Favor! Did I not tell you he would never allow me to marry an Englishman? He said he would sooner see me buried."

"And you yielded? Made no struggle? Let the hard, cruel man have his way?"

She was walking off to look again at that picture which had attracted her attention the time before, but at this word gave me one little sidelong look that was inexpressibly suggestive.

"I obeyed him when he commanded, if that is what you mean."

"And dismissed Mr. Clavering after having given him your word of honor to be his wife?"

"Why not, when I found I could not keep my word."

"Then you have decided not to marry him?"

She did not reply at once, but lifted her face mechanically to the picture.

"My uncle would tell you that I had decided to be governed wholly by his wishes!" she responded at last with what I felt was self-scornful bitterness.

Greatly disappointed, I burst into tears. "Oh, Mary!" I cried, "Oh, Mary!" and instantly blushed, startled that I had called her by her first name.

But she did not appear to notice.

"Have you any complaint to make?" she asked. "Is it not my manifest duty to be governed by my uncle's wishes? Has he not brought me up from childhood? lavished every luxury upon me? made me all I am, even to the love of riches which he has instilled into my soul with every gift he has thrown into my lap, every word he has dropped into my ear, since I was old enough to know what riches meant? Is it for me now to turn my back upon fostering care so wise, beneficent, and free, just because a man whom I have known some two weeks chances to offer me in exchange what he pleases to call his love?"

"But," I feebly essayed, convinced perhaps by the tone of sarcasm in which this was uttered that she was not far from my way of thinking after all, "if in two weeks you have learned to love this man more than everything else, even the riches which make your uncle's favor a thing of such moment—"

"Well," said she, "what then?"

"Why, then I would say, secure your happiness with the man of your choice, if you have to marry him in secret, trusting to your influence over your uncle to win the forgiveness he never can persistently deny."

You should have seen the arch expression which stole across her face at that. "Would it not be better," she asked, creeping to my arms, and laying her head on my shoulder, "would it not be better for me to make sure of that uncle's favor first, before undertaking the hazardous experiment of running away with a too ardent lover?"

Struck by her manner, I lifted her face and looked at it. It was one amused smile.