Her Mother's Secret Part 18

"Oh! don't look so, Le!--don't look so! I am not worth it, Le! Indeed I am not!"

"Do I understand you to say that you break your engagement to me, and marry this foreigner, of your own free, unbiased will?" he asked, at last, in cold, hard, restrained tones.

"Yes, yes, yes! that is what I am going to do!" replied Odalite, with the firmness of despair.

"Then you are false to me--to me, your lover, who had never a thought that was false to you!--to me, your mate of many years!--to me, your almost husband!" cried the youth, losing all self-command in the sharpness of his pain, and bursting into a tempest of grief and rage, and launching fierce reproaches upon her.

She raised her hands in piteous deprecation, and then held them up before her head as if to s.h.i.+eld it from the storm.

But as he flashed the lightnings of scorn and hurled the thunder of condemnation upon her, she cowered lower and lower, holding by the bench on which she sat, until at length, utterly overwhelmed, she sank to the ground, rolled over, and lay with her face downward on the sand at his feet.

But she uttered no word in self-defense; she only wept and sobbed as if her heart were bursting.

By this time the frenzy of pa.s.sion had spent itself, and there came a reaction that brought him to his senses. He looked down at Odalite in her misery. He saw in her now, not the faithless sweetheart, but the child of his boyish love and care.

He stooped and raised her up, and set her on the bench again, laying her head upon his shoulder, and supporting her form with his arm around her waist.

She made no resistance, but continued to weep convulsively.

As soon as he was able to command himself he spoke to her in a quiet tone.

"Odalite, why do you cry so hard? If you are going to marry this man to please yourself you should be happy, in spite of anything that I should say about it. Now, why do you grieve so much?"

"Oh! I have been so faithless to you, Le! I have been--so base to you! Oh!

I wish I were dead! I wish I had died before I betrayed your trust in me, Le!"

These words came in spasmodic gasps and sighs from the white and quivering lips.

He looked at her searchingly, incisively; he could not understand her.

"Odalite," he said, suddenly, "I am full of doubt. I ask you again, and I charge you in the name of all that is pure and holy, to answer me truly: Was it of your own free will that you engaged yourself to Col. Anglesea?"

"Yes, yes! I repeat it: No one forced me, no one persuaded me. My father and my mother let me do just as I pleased," she sobbed.

"And yet, though you say this, you seem so miserable over it all! I cannot comprehend it!" muttered Leonidas Force, carrying his hand to his forehead and trying to reflect on the situation. "But--yes--I think I do now," he said, suddenly, as a light seemed to break on his mind.

Odalite raised her pale and tearful face from his shoulder and looked at him.

"I think I understand now, my dear; and it shall all come right yet."

She sorrowfully shook her head.

"Oh, yes; it shall come right. Confess now, Odalite. When your boy lover had been gone away so long that you had almost forgotten him, this foreign officer comes along and fascinates you with his splendor, as the rattlesnake fascinates the humming bird, and you were drawn in. Now, however, that I have come back, the old-time love has revived, and you are sorry that you mistook your heart and engaged yourself to this brilliant stranger. Is it not so? Tell me, Odalite. If it is so--as I feel sure it must be--then I will put in my prior claim and stop the marriage, send the interloping foreigner back to his own country, and you and I will marry and go to housekeeping at Greenbushes, according to our lifelong engagement. That is, if the old love has revived, as of course it has," he concluded, looking eagerly in her face.

She did not answer him. She could not.

Was the old, true love revived, indeed?

No! for the sweet, sacred love of childhood had never died, never failed, but burned now a pure fire that wasted her life.

Was she sorry that she had engaged herself to that man?

So sorry, at least, stern necessity had compelled her to do so, that now death would have been a welcome release.

But she could not tell Leonidas this.

He waited for her answer for a few moments, and then continued:

"Does that grave silence give consent, my Odalite? You are sorry? While your sailor sweetheart was so far off and so long away that you had almost forgotten what he looked like, you let your fancy be taken by this fine foreigner, with his fine social position and his wealth. But now your sailor lad has come home again, and you see him, and you know whom it is you really love, you are sorry for what you were misled into doing. But don't cry any more. You shall not be compelled to marry that man, since you do not wish to, even though you did accept him of your own free will!

for you had no right to accept him, you know; you were engaged to me. But to think that he has kissed you!" exclaimed the youth, with a jealous pang, as he remembered the usual manner of sealing such an acceptance.

"Oh, no, no, Le! He has never kissed me--never, never kissed me--and he never shall until I cease to be myself and become his property, a body without a soul, which cannot help itself," said Odalite, with a woeful, wintry smile of triumph and defiance breaking through the cold rain of her tears.

"You--you--you have never let him kiss you--not even when you accepted him!" exclaimed Le, in pleased surprise.

"No; not then; nor ever! No; nor ever shall, until I become his slave in marriage!" exclaimed the girl, with a dangerous sparkle in her eyes.

"But that shall never be! Why, Odalite, you speak not only as if you do not like the man, but as if you really hate him; and that being so, you shall not marry him! I will put a stop to that at once! I have the first right to you by a long distance--the only right to you, indeed--and--and I'll throttle him--confound him!--before he shall have a hair of your head!"

"Oh, Le, hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ You don't know! You mistake! Le, I must marry him! Do you understand? I must, I say!" wailed Odalite, wringing her hands.

"And you shall not, I say, because you do not want to. Your promise to him goes for nothing beside my claims," said the youth, in a tone of gay defiance.

"But, Le! Le! I--I--I want to marry him! I do indeed!" she cried, again bursting into tears and weeping violently.

He drew back from her in amazement, staring at her, while she repeated and reiterated her words, that she really wished to marry Col. Anglesea.

"I cannot comprehend you at all, Odalite. My heart aches for your evident suffering; but I cannot comprehend it. I almost fear that you are not quite sane! If you really please yourself in marrying Anglesea--as you insist that you do--why should you be so miserable over it all?"

"Oh, Le! as I told you before, it is because--because I feel that I am acting so basely by you!--oh, my dear! the thought almost maddens me!" she sobbed.

"And is it indeed for me that the gentle heart suffers so much?"

questioned Le, utterly subdued by her sorrow and humility. "Do not cry, Odalite. I was cruel, and brutal, and most unmanly to blame you so much a while ago. I am sorry and ashamed of having done so, Odalite. I have no excuse to offer, unless it is that the suddenness and the bitterness of my disappointment threw me off my balance. Forgive me, Odalite. And do not spend another thought or shed another tear over me. Poor, little, tender Odalite! Do not mind me, little one! I--I--I shall get over this when I feel sure that you are happy. Do not grieve so! I shall never blame you any more, dear! I mourn that I ever could have been such a wretch as to blame you, for you could not help what has happened. I was away at the antipodes--had been there for years. He was in the house with you for three months. And--and--I have noticed--even I--what a fascination some of these handsome, brilliant soldiers exercise over young girls! You were fascinated, and your affections were won before you knew it. You did not mean to be drawn away from me any more than the boat means to be sucked into the whirlpool! You could not avert your fate any more than the boat could. I do not condemn you, Odalite. And I shall always--always love--no!

I must not love another man's bride, even though he has stolen her from me; but I will always care for you as for a dear and only sister. There!

there! do not cry any more. It is all for the best! All for the best!" he concluded, in a broken voice, that all his effort failed to steady.

"Le! oh, Le! I am so miserable--so miserable! Oh, Le!" she cried, looking wildly up into his eyes and then staring fixedly down upon the sea at their feet--"oh, Le! I wonder would the merciful Lord forgive me if--if----" She paused and pointed downward.

Leonidas shuddered, but controlled himself. He now believed the girl to be laboring under a temporary fit of insanity. He took her hand, raised her up, and drawing her arm within his own, said, gently:

"Come, dear, let me take you home to your mother."

She silently a.s.sented, and he led her up the hill, through the wood to the lawn gate, and across the lawn to the house.

They had not spoken a word since leaving the sh.o.r.e.

Le took her into the house, and into the sitting room usually occupied by Mrs. Force.

That lady sat, as was her custom, in her low sewing chair beside her worktable in the angle of the fireplace and the side window.