Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall Part 21

The afternoon of the day following the terrible scene between Sir George and his daughter at the supper table, Dorothy rode forth alone upon her mare Dolcy. From the window of my room in Eagle Tower I saw her go down the west side of the Wye toward Rowsley. I ascended to the roof of the tower, and from that elevation I saw her cross the river, and soon she was lost to sight in the forest. At that time I knew nothing of the new trysting-place, but I felt sure that Dorothy had gone out to seek John.

The sun shone brightly, and its gentle warmth enticed me to remain upon the tower battlements, to muse, and to dream. I fetched my pipe and tobacco from my room. I had been smoking at intervals for several months, but had not entirely learned to like the weed, because of a slight nausea which it invariably caused me to feel. But I thought by practice now and again to inure myself to the habit, which was then so new and fas.h.i.+onable among modish gentlemen. While I smoked I mused upon the past and present, and tried to peer into the future--a fruitless task wherein we waste much valuable time; a vain striving, like Eve's, after forbidden knowledge, which, should we possess it, would destroy the little remnant of Eden still existing on earth. Could we look forward only to our joys, a knowledge of the future might be good to have; but imagine, if you can, the horror of antic.i.p.ating evils to come.

After a short time, a lotuslike dreaminess stole over me, and past and future seemed to blend in a supreme present of contentment and rest. Then I knew I had wooed and won Tobacco and that thenceforth I had at hand an ever ready solace in time of trouble. At the end of an hour my dreaming was disturbed by voices, which came distinctly up to me from the base of the tower. I leaned over the battlements to listen, and what I heard gave me alarm and concern such as all the tobacco in the world could not a.s.suage. I looked down the dizzy heights of Eagle Tower and saw Sir George in conversation with Ben Shaw, a woodman. I had not heard the words first spoken between them.

"Ay, ay, Sir George," said Ben, "they be there, by Bowling Green Gate, now. I saw them twenty minutes since,--Mistress Vernon and a gentleman."

"Perhaps the gentleman is Sir Malcolm," answered my cousin. I drew back from the battlements, and the woodman replied, "Perhaps he be, but I doubt it."

There had been a partial reconciliation--sincere on Sir George's part, but false and hollow on Dorothy's--which Madge had brought about between father and daughter that morning. Sir George, who was sober and repentant of his harshness, was inclined to be tender to Dorothy, though he still insisted in the matter of the Stanley marriage. Dorothy's anger had cooled, and cunning had taken its place. Sir George had asked her to forgive him for the hard words he had spoken, and she had again led him to believe that she would be dutiful and obedient. It is hard to determine, as a question of right and wrong, whether Dorothy is to be condemned or justified in the woful deception she practised upon her father. To use a plain, ugly word, she lied to him without hesitation or pain of conscience. Still, we must remember that, forty years ago, girls were frequently forced, regardless of cries and piteous agony, into marriages to which death would have been preferable. They were flogged into obedience, imprisoned and starved into obedience, and alas! they were sometimes killed in the course of punishment for disobedience by men of Sir George's school and temper. I could give you at least one instance in which a fair girl met her death from punishment inflicted by her father because she would not consent to wed the man of his choice. Can we blame Dorothy if she would lie or rob or do murder to avoid a fate which to her would have been worse than death? When you find yourself condemning her, now or hereafter in this history, if you are a man ask yourself this question: "If I had a sweetheart in Dorothy's sad case, should I not wish her to do as she did? Should I not wish, if it were possible by any means, that she should save herself from the worst of fates, and should save me from the agony of losing her to such a man as Sir George had selected for Dorothy's husband? Is it not a sin to disobey the law of self-preservation actively or pa.s.sively?" Answer these questions as you choose. As for myself, I say G.o.d bless Dorothy for lying. Perhaps I am in error. Perhaps I am not. I but tell you the story of Dorothy as it happened, and I am a poor hand at solving questions of right and wrong where a beautiful woman is concerned. To my thinking, she usually is in the right. In any case, she is sure to have the benefit of the doubt.

When Sir George heard the woodman's story, he started hurriedly toward Bowling Green Gate.

Now I shall tell you of Dorothy's adventures after I saw her cross the Wye.

When she reached the gate, John was waiting for her.

"Ah, Sir John, I am so glad you are here. That is, I am glad you are here before I arrived--good even," said the girl, confusedly. Her heart again was beating in a provoking manner, and her breath would not come with ease and regularity. The rapid progress of the malady with which she was afflicted or blessed was plainly discernible since the last meeting with my friend, Sir John. That is, it would have been plain to any one but John, whose ailment had taken a fatal turn and had progressed to the ante-mortem state of blindness. By the help of the stimulating hope and fear which Dorothy's letter had brought to him, he had planned an elaborate conversation, and had determined to speak decisive words. He hoped to receive from her the answer for which he longed; but his heart and breath seemed to have conspired with Dorothy to make intercommunication troublesome.

"I received your gracious letter, Mistress Vernon, and I thank you. I was--I am--that is, my thanks are more than I--I can express."

"So I see," said the girl, half amused at John's condition, although it was but little worse than her own. This universal malady, love, never takes its blind form in women. It opens their eyes. Under its influence they can see the truth through a millstone. The girl's heart jumped with joy when she saw John's truth-telling manner, and composure quickly came to her relief, though she still feigned confusion because she wished him to see the truth in her as she had seen it in him. She well knew of his blindness, and had almost begun to fear lest she would eventually be compelled to tell him in words that which she so ardently wished him to see for himself. She thought John was the blindest of his s.e.x; but she was, to a certain extent, mistaken. John was blind, as you already know, but his reticence was not all due to a lack of sight. He at least had reached the condition of a well-developed hope. He hoped the girl cared for him. He would have fully believed it had it not been for the difficulty he found in convincing himself that a G.o.ddess like Dorothy could care for a man so unworthy as himself. Most modest persons are self-respecting. That was John's condition; he was not vain.

"Jennie brought me your letter also," said the girl, laughing because she was happy, though her merriment somewhat disconcerted John.

"It told me," she continued, "that you would come. I have it here in my pocket--and--and the gate key." She determined this time to introduce the key early in the engagement. "But I feared you might not want to come."

The cunning, the boldness, and the humility of the serpent was in the girl. "That is, you know, I thought--perhaps--that is, I feared that you might not come. Your father might have been ill, or you might have changed your mind after you wrote the letter."

"No," answered John, whose face was beaming with joy. Here, truly, was a G.o.ddess who could make the blind to see if she were but given a little time.

"Do you mean that your father is not ill, or that you did not change your mind?" asked Dorothy, whose face, as it should have been after such a speech, was bent low while she struggled with the great iron key, entangled in the pocket of her gown.

"I mean that I have not changed my mind," said John, who felt that the time to speak had come. "There has been no change in me other than a new access of eagerness with every hour, and a new longing to see you and to hear your voice."

Dorothy felt a great thrill pa.s.s through her breast, and she knew that the reward of her labors was at hand.

"Certainly," said the self-complacent girl, hardly conscious of her words, so great was the joyous tumult in her heart, "I should have known."

There was another pause devoted to the key, with bended head. "But--but you might have changed your mind," she continued, "and I might not have known it, for, you see, I did not know your former state of mind; you have never told me." Her tongue had led her further than she had intended to go, and she blushed painfully, and I think, considering her words, appropriately.

"My letter told you my state of mind. At least it told you of my intention to come. I--I fear that I do not understand you," said John.

"I mean," she replied, with a saucy, fluttering little laugh as she looked up from her conflict with the entangled key, "I mean that--that you don't know what I mean. But here is the key at last, and--and--you may, if you wish, come to this side of the gate."

She stepped forward to unlock the gate with an air that seemed to say, "Now, John, you shall have a clear field."

But to her surprise she found that the lock had been removed. That discovery brought back to John his wandering wits.

"Mistress Dorothy," he cried in tones of alarm, "I must not remain here.

We are suspected and are sure to be discovered. Your father has set a trap for us. I care not for myself, but I would not bring upon you the trouble and distress which would surely follow discovery. Let us quickly choose another place and time of meeting. I pray you, sweet lady, meet me to-morrow at this time near the white cliff back of Lathkil mill. I have that to say to you which is the very blood of my heart. I must now leave you at once."

He took her hand, and kissing it, started to leave through the open gate.

The girl caught his arm to detain him. "Say it now, John, say it now. I have dreamed of it by night and by day. You know all, and I know all, and I long to hear from your lips the words that will break down all barriers between us." She had been carried away by the mad onrush of her pa.s.sion.

She was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain, and she spoke because she could not help it.

"I will speak, Dorothy, G.o.d help me! G.o.d help me, I will speak!" said John, as he caught the girl to his breast in a fierce embrace. "I love you, I love you! G.o.d Himself only knows how deeply, how pa.s.sionately! I do not know. I cannot fathom its depths. With all my heart and soul, with every drop of blood that pulses through my veins, I love you--I adore you.

Give me your lips, my beauty, my Aphrodite, my queen!"

"There--they--are, John,--there they are. They are--all yours--all yours--now! Oh, G.o.d! my blood is on fire." She buried her face on his breast for shame, that he might not see her burning eyes and her scarlet cheeks. Then after a time she cared not what he saw, and she lifted her lips to his, a voluntary offering. The supreme emotions of the moment drove all other consciousness from their souls.

"Tell me, Dorothy, that you will be my wife. Tell me, tell me!" cried John.

"I will, I will, oh, how gladly, how gladly!"

"Tell me that no power on earth can force you to marry Lord Stanley. Tell me that you will marry no man but me; that you will wait--wait for me till--"

"I will marry no man but you, John, no man but you," said the girl, whisperingly. Her head was thrown back from his breast that she might look into his eyes, and that he might see the truth in hers. "I am all yours.

But oh, John, I cannot wait--I cannot! Do not ask me to wait. It would kill me. I wear the golden heart you gave me, John," she continued, as she nestled closer in his embrace. "I wear the golden heart always. It is never from me, even for one little moment. I bear it always upon my heart, John. Here it is." She drew from her breast the golden heart and kissed it. Then she pressed it to his lips, and said: "I kiss it twenty times in the day and in the night; ay, a hundred times. I do not know how often; but now I kiss your real heart, John," and she kissed his breast, and then stood tiptoe to lift her lips to his.

There was no room left now in John's heart for doubt that Dorothy Vernon was his own forever and forever. She had convinced him beyond the reach of fear or doubt. John forgot the lockless gate. He forgot everything but Dorothy, and cruel time pa.s.sed with a rapidity of which they were unconscious. They were, however, brought back to consciousness by hearing a long blast from the forester's bugle, and John immediately retreated through the gate.

Dorothy then closed the gate and hastily seated herself upon a stone bench against the Haddon side of the wall. She quickly a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of listless repose, and Dolcy, who was nibbling at the gra.s.s near by, doubtless supposed that her mistress had come to Bowling Green Gate to rest because it was a secluded place, and because she desired to be alone.

Dorothy's att.i.tude was not a.s.sumed one moment too soon, for hardly was her gown arranged with due regard to carelessness when Sir George's form rose above the crest of Bowling Green Hill. In a few minutes he was standing in front of his daughter, red with anger. Dorothy's face wore a look of calm innocence, which I believe would have deceived Solomon himself, notwithstanding that great man's experience with the s.e.x. It did more to throw Sir George off the scent than any words the girl could have spoken.

"Who has been with you?" demanded Sir George, angrily.

"When, father?" queried the girl, listlessly resting her head against the wall.

"Now, this afternoon. Who has been with you? Ben Shaw said that a man was here. He said that he saw a man with you less than half an hour since."

That piece of information was startling to Dorothy, but no trace of surprise was visible in her manner or in her voice. She turned listlessly and brushed a dry leaf from her gown. Then she looked calmly up into her father's face and said laconically, but to the point:--

"Ben lied." To herself she said, "Ben shall also suffer."

"I do not believe that Ben lied," said Sir George. "I, myself, saw a man go away from here."

That was crowding the girl into close quarters, but she did not flinch.

"Which way did he go, father?" she asked, with a fine show of carelessness in her manner, but with a feeling of excruciating fear in her breast. She well knew the wisdom of the maxim, "Never confess."

"He went northward," answered Sir George.

"Inside the wall?" asked Dorothy, beginning again to breathe freely, for she knew that John had ridden southward.

"Inside the wall, of course," her father replied. "Do you suppose I could see him through the stone wall? One should be able to see through a stone wall to keep good watch on you."

"You might have thought you saw him through the wall," answered the girl.