Heriot's Choice Part 48

'Why should they not approve? My father loves you as a daughter--they all do; they would take you into their hearts, and you would never be lonely again. Oh, Ethel, is there no hope? Do you mean that you cannot love me?'

'I have always loved you; but we are too young, yes, that is it, we are too young--too much of an age. If I marry, I must look up to my husband.

Indeed, indeed, we are too young, Richard!'

'I am, you mean;' how calm he was growing; why his very voice was under his control now. 'Listen to me, dear: I am only six months older than you, but in a love like mine age does not count; it is no boyish lover you are dismissing, Ethel; I am older in everything than you; I should not be afraid to take care of you.'

No, he was not afraid; as she looked up into that handsome resolute face, and read there the earnestness of his words, Ethel's eyes dropped before that clear, dominant glance as they had never done before. It was she that was afraid now--afraid of this young lover, so grave, so strong, so self-controlled; this was not her old favourite, this new, quiet-spoken Richard. She would fain have kept them both, but it must not be.

'May I speak to your father?' he pleaded. 'At least you will be frank with me; I have little to offer, I know--a hard-working curate's home, and that not yet.'

'Hus.h.!.+ I will not have this from you,' and for a moment Ethel's true woman's soul gleamed in her eyes; 'if you were penniless it would make no difference; I would give up anything, everything for the man I loved.

For shame, Richard, when you know I loathe the very name of riches.'

'Yes, I know your great soul, Ethel; it is this that I love even more than your beauty, and I must not tell you what I think of that; it is not because I am poor and unambitious that you refuse me?'

'No, no,' she returned hurriedly; 'you know it is not.'

'And you do not love any one else?'

'No, Richard,' still more faintly.

'Then I will not despair,' and as he spoke there rushed upon him a sudden conviction, from whence he knew not, that one day this girl whom he was wooing so earnestly, and who was silencing him with such brief sweet replies, should one day be his wife; that the beauty, and the great soul, and the sad yearning heart should be his and no other's; that one day--a long distant day, perhaps--he should win her for his own.

And with the conviction, as he told Mildred long afterwards, there came a settled calm, and a wonderful strength that he never felt before; the world, his own world, seemed flooded over with this great purpose and love of his; and as he stood there before her, almost stooping over, and yet not touching her, there came a vivid brightness into his eyes that scared Ethel.

'Of what are you thinking, Richard?' she said almost tremblingly.

'Nay, I must not tell you.'

Should he tell her? would she credit this strange prophecy of his? dimly across his mind, as he stood there before her, there came the thought of a certain shepherd, who waited seven years for the Rachel of his love.

'No, I will not tell you; dear, give me your hand,' and as she gave it him--wondering and yet fearful--he touched it lightly and reverently with his lips.

'Now I must go. Some day--years hence, perhaps--I shall speak of this again; until then we are friends still, is it not so?'

'Yes--yes,' she returned eagerly; 'we must try to forget this. I cannot lose you altogether, Richard.'

'You will never lose me; perhaps--yes it will be better--I may go away for a little time; you must promise me one thing, to take care of yourself, if only for the sake of your old friend Richard.'

'Yes, I will promise,' she returned, bursting into tears. Oh, why was her heart so hard; why could she not love him? As she looked after him, walking with grave even strides down the garden path, a pa.s.sionate pity and yearning seemed to wake in her heart. How good he was, how n.o.ble, how true. 'Oh, if he were not so young, and I could love him as he ought to be loved,' she said to herself as the gate clanged after him, and she was left alone in the sunset.

CHAPTER XX

WHARTON HALL FARM

'A dappled sky, a world of meadows, Circling above us the black rooks fly Forward, backward; lo, their dark shadow Flits on the blossoming tapestry.

Bare gra.s.sy slopes, where kids are tethered Round valleys like nests all ferny-lined, Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered, Swell high in their freckled robes behind.'

Jean Ingelow.

Mr. Lambert was soon made acquainted with his son's disappointment; but his sympathy was somewhat chilled by Richard's composed tranquillity of bearing. Perhaps it might be a little forced, but the young man certainly bore himself as though he had sustained no special defeat; the concentrated gravity of purpose which had scared Ethel was still apparent.

'You need not be so anxious about me, father,' he said, with almost a smile, in return to Mr. Lambert's look of questioning sadness. 'I have climbed too high and have had a fall, that is all. I must bear what other and better men have borne before me.'

'My brave boy; but, Cardie, is there no hope of relenting; none?'

'She would not have me, that is all I can tell you,' returned Richard, in the same quiet voice. 'You must not take this too much to heart; it is my fate to love her, and to go on loving her; if she refused me a dozen times, it would be the same with me, father.'

Mr. Lambert shook his head; he was greatly troubled; for the moment his heart was a little sore against this girl, who was the destroyer of his son's peace.

'You may hide it from me, but you will eat out your heart with sadness and longing,' he said, with something of a groan. Richard was very dear to him, though he was not Benjamin. He was more like Joseph, he thought, a little quaintly, as he looked up at the n.o.ble young face. 'Yes, Joseph, the ruler among his brethren. Ah, Cardie, it is not to be, I suppose; and now you will eat out your heart and youth with the longing after this girl.'

'Do not think so meanly of me,' returned the young man with a flush.

'You loved my mother for three years before you married her, and I only pleaded my cause yesterday. Do you think I should be worthy of loving the n.o.blest, yes, the n.o.blest of women,' he continued, his gray eyes lighting up with enthusiasm, 'if I were so weakly to succ.u.mb to this disappointment. _Laborare est orare_--that shall be my motto, father. We must leave results in higher hands.'

'G.o.d bless and comfort you, my son,' returned Mr. Lambert, with some emotion. He looked at Richard with a sort of tender reverence; would that all disappointed lovers could bear themselves as generously as his brave boy, he thought; and then they sat for a few minutes in silence.

'You do not mind my going away for a little while? I think Roy would be glad to have me?' asked Richard presently.

'No, Cardie; but we shall be sorry to lose you.'

'If I were only thinking of myself, I would remain; but it will be better for her,' he continued, hesitating; 'she could not come here, at least, not yet; but if I were away it would make no difference. I want you all to be kinder than ever to her, father,' and now his voice shook a little for the first time. 'You do not know how utterly lonely and miserable she is,' and the promise given, Richard quietly turned the conversation into other channels.

But he was less reticent with Mildred, and to her he avowed that his pain was very great.

'I can bear to live without her; at least I could be patient for years, but I cannot bear leaving her to her father's sorry protection. If my love could only s.h.i.+eld her in her trouble, I think I could be content,'

and Mildred understood him.

'We will all be so good to her for your sake,' she returned, with a nice womanly tact, not wearying him with effusion of sympathy, but giving him just the comforting a.s.surance he needed. Richard's fort.i.tude and calmness had deceived his father, but Mildred knew something of the silence of exceeding pain.

'Thank you,' he said in a low voice; and Mildred knew she had said the right thing.

But as he was bidding them good-bye two days afterwards, he beckoned her apart from the others.

'Aunt Milly, I trust her to you,' he said, hurriedly; 'remember all my comfort lies in your goodness to her.'

'Yes, Richard, I know; as far as I can, I will be her friend. You shall hear everything from me,' and so she sent him away half-comforted.

Half--comforted, though his heart ached with its mighty burden of love; and though he would have given half his strong young years to hear her say, 'I love you, Richard.' Could older men love better, nay, half as well as he did, with such self-sacrificing purity and faith?

Yes, his pain was great, for delay and uncertainty are bitter to the young, and they would fain cleave with impatient hand the veiled mystery of life; but nevertheless his heart was strong within him, for though he could not speak of his hope, for fear that others might call it visionary, yet it stirred to the very foundation of his soul; for so surely as he suffered now, he knew that one day he should call Ethel Trelawny his wife.

When Richard was gone, and the household un.o.bservant and occupied in its own business, Mildred quietly fetched her shady hat, and went through the field paths, bordered by tall gra.s.ses and great s.h.i.+ning ox-eyed daises, which led to the shrubberies of Kirkleatham.