The Orange Girl Part 60

'My lord,' she said, 'you can speak with perfect freedom. I entreat you to use perfect freedom before my cousins. I have no secrets from them; they can tell you perhaps more about myself than I ever will speak--for myself.'

Lord Brockenhurst coloured and was confused, but only for a little.

'Dear Madame,' he said, 'since you will not give an interview alone I must make the best of the presence of others.'

'They know everything,' said Madame.

He bowed. 'I have told you,' he said, 'that I have brought out and delivered over to the Governor your full pardon and release. These papers are a copy.'

Jenny pushed them aside. 'I do not want to see them,' she said, 'let me never be reminded of their existence. Take them, Will, and lock them up.'

I received them and placed them in my pocket.

'That done, Madame,' he went on, 'I have only to invite your remembrance of a certain proposal that--I believe you have not forgotten it. Since your worthy cousins know what that proposal was I have only to say that once more, most divine woman, I offer myself--my name and rank--my fortune and possessions--at your feet.' He fell on his knees and took her hand.

Jenny turned away her face. 'Answer him, Alice--tell him what I have so often told you. Rise, my Lord. Do not pain me by kneeling at my unworthy feet.'

'My Lord,' said Alice solemnly, 'there is no one in the world--believe me--whom Jenny regards with greater respect and grat.i.tude than yourself.'

'Respect and grat.i.tude are but cold words,' he said.

'Let me add with greater love. Your Lords.h.i.+p is the only man in the world whom she has ever loved or could love. That also, believe me, is most true.'

'Why, then----' He held out his hand.

'Nay, my Lord. Jenny loves you so well that nothing would induce her to accept the honour of your proposal.'

'How? Loves me so well?'

'Jenny bids me tell you that the time would come when your children would ask who was their mother, and who were her mother's friends. They would learn her history, I need not remind you of her history. You know it all. Jenny loves you too well to bring shame and discredit on a n.o.ble House. Your children, she says, must have a mother worthy of yourself.'

'There is no more worthy woman in the world than Jenny!'

'Their mother must have an unblemished name, my Lord, worthy of your own. She knows you to be so good and loyal that you could never reproach her with the past. But it belongs to her. And, my Lord, it must not belong to you.'

'It must not; it shall not,' Jenny repeated through her tears.

'Is this your answer, Jenny? Oh! Jenny, will you cast me off for such a scruple?'

'I must--I must. Go, my Lord. Think of me no more. Why'--she sprang to her feet--'what could I expect? I--the Orange Girl--the daughter of the Black Jack--the friend of thieves; the Newgate Prisoner; the transported convict? A coronet? For me? the hand of a n.o.ble gentleman? the name of a n.o.ble house? For me? Fie upon you, my Lord, for thinking of such a thing! Remember what is due to a gentleman. And I thank you--oh! I thank you--you can never know how much--for thinking--you the only one--of nothing less or lower. Go, my Lord. Tempt me no more. I know what I must do. Farewell.'

He seized her in his arms; he kissed her--forehead and cheek and lips and hands. He ceased to urge his suit. He saw that she was fixed, and in his heart he knew that she was right. 'I obey,' he said. 'Oh! n.o.blest of women, I obey.'

So he rushed away, and Jenny fell into Alice's arms.

I sit on my own estate in the pleasant land of Virginia; outside the veranda the hot sun ripens the corn and fruit: I did my duty in the great and glorious war which set our country free: my sons will do theirs if the occasion should again arise: we have taught our cousins across the seas that we can fight for freedom: but there will be no more fighting for that. It is won, once for all--I am now old, but as I sit alone, my eyes resting on as fair a landscape of river and forest and orchard and garden as the world can show, I suddenly wander away and gaze beyond the ocean, beyond the years, upon that abode of despair and wretchedness, where Jenny sits like a flower in a pigsty, talking of what she should do when she came out of prison, but unable to read in the future any return to the world at all. As for fear or doubt, or any anxiety about the future, the poor soul had none. She was going to continue for ever beautiful, to win that wors.h.i.+p of men which she loved so much. I have now lost all the friends of my youth: they pa.s.s before me sometimes in a long procession. It is the consolation of age to live in the past: but in all the array of ghosts there is none that brings tears except the figure of Jenny in her wondrous beauty and her soft and lovely eyes.

She lived with us for more than thirty years. She grew gray--but she was as lovely in her age as in her youth. She was mistress unquestioned to the end and never more than in her old age. But always with the same kindness: the same grace: the same sweetness of look, and the same softness of eye.

She died at last of some fever caught of a young negress whom she visited in the infirmary. She was ill for three days only, and she died lying in the veranda, looking out upon the woods and mountains on the golden suns.h.i.+ne that she loved.

'Alice, dear,' she said, 'you have told me, often, that we are led, we know not how, to things that are best for us, though by ways that we would not choose. I have not forgotten what you said. I never forget, my dear, what you say.'

Alice kissed her fingers.

'I understand now what you mean. I have been led. I have been led----My dear, I am going to die. Bury me as one of yourselves--not in a ditch like my own people--who, perhaps, are not led. Bury me in the burial-ground where your baby lies. Put no stone upon my grave, but plant white flowers over it. Let my abode, at least, look lovely after death. I have been led, Alice--I have been led--I understand it now.'

After a little. 'Alice, I have been proud of what men called my loveliness. It makes every woman happy when men call her lovely. My Lord called me lovely. Send him, Alice, a lock of my hair. Tell him that I have never loved any other man.'

She died. We buried her in the little burial-ground where lay the child we lost. We put up no headstone, but we planted the grave with white flowers.

There is now another grave beside hers with more white flowers. It bears the name of Alice.

To me it has been given to love two women at the same time, and that with equal love and equal respect and without blame or sin.