Hope Mills Part 9

It was a late August evening, with a small crescent moon s.h.i.+ning softly as if its forces were well-nigh spent. The heat of the day was over, and the falling dew evolved a kind of autumnal sweetness, the flavor of ripening fruits rather than flowers. Yerbury was very quiet in the part they were to traverse. They walked under great maples where a shadowy light sifted through, and the houses looked like fragments of dreams, with here and there a lamp in a distant window. The slow wind wandered through pines and hemlocks, as if some fairy Puck had laid his finger to his lips, saying to crooning insects, "Hush, hus.h.!.+" A night to dream as one went down "Lovers' Lane."

Sylvie was radiantly beautiful. Her face always changed so with her moods. Every feature had a perfect sculptured look, but intensely human,--the straight nose with the flexible, sensitive nostrils, quivering at any sudden breath, the dainty chin and white throat, the red curved lips that seem to smile at some inward, richly satisfying thought, the large l.u.s.trous eyes serious as those of a nun, and the calm, clear brow that seemed to index the strength and fineness of the nature. He did not take in any of the occult meanings: to him she was simply a pretty girl whom he could dress in silk instead of lawn.

The small hand had lain on his arm without the faintest movement. Now he took it in his, and pressed it softly. She frowned, and made a slight, repellant gesture.

"Sylvie?" with a lingering intonation that was hardly inquiry.

"Well!" roused out of her quiet into a momentary petulance.

"Sylvie, I love you. Will you be my wife?"

In his most commonplace dreams he had never made love so briefly. He startled himself.

"Don't!" in a short, decisive tone, as if he were merely teasing.

"Sylvie, I am in earnest;" and in his tone the man spoke.

"Then I think you are mistaken." She seemed to look at him in the cool light of invincible candor and honesty.

"No, Sylvie, I am not mistaken," gaining courage that it was to be argument instead of sentiment. "I have had this purpose in my mind for some time, and have solicited your aunt's consent. You have only to say"--

"I have many things to say, but a.s.sent is not one of them;" in a voice that, though low, seemed to cleave the air with a steely ring. "You think you love me. Perhaps you do--as far as you are capable of loving any thing beside yourself. You have seen a good deal of me this summer, and have made up your mind to marry. I possess some of the necessary requirements, and doubtless suit you better than any mere fas.h.i.+onable woman. But you have none of that intense desire that makes a matter of life and death of love, that elects one woman, or forever keeps a vacant niche in the soul."

"Sylvie!"

Her pa.s.sionate words stunned him. He turned to her with a puzzled look, a certain helplessness, as if he were stranded on some far, foreign sh.o.r.e. And then he met her l.u.s.trous eyes, so clear that they were almost pitiless in the glow of undimmed truth.

"Can you not trust me?" with the gentle reproachfulness so winning to most women, so confident of a victory over a heart that loves.

"I could trust you to care for no other woman when your word was pa.s.sed, but it seems to me," and her heart swelled with something like contempt, "that you are but playing at love. Marriage in your estimation is a fit and proper step: your mother likes me, you prefer me to any one else"--

"Good heavens, Sylvie! what more do you want?" and a flood of scarlet mounted his calm, handsome brow. "When a man chooses a woman out of the whole circle of his friends and acquaintances, what higher compliment can he pay her? I have seen women beside those in Yerbury; and, though it may savor of vanity, I believe there _are_ those who would appreciate"--

"I wonder you did not go to them;" with a fine irony, cutting short his sentence.

"Because I liked you, chose you."

"I do not so desire to be chosen," she answered quickly. "The man I marry must win my respect, my highest faith; must have an aim, an ambition, and not dawdle through life as some silly woman might."

The decisive voice seemed to cut a path between him and her as it went.

It struck home uncomfortably.

"Then I suppose you call all men not engaged in manual labor, dawdlers,--scholars, poets, men of leisure, who can devote their lives to work that requires patience and fineness of detail, rather than the heavy swing of a blacksmith's hammer. When a man has no need of work"--and Fred paused, a trifle out of temper.

"I do not believe G.o.d ever made an idler," she said, with high gravity that widened the gulf between them. "To whom much is given, much will be required."

How unreasonable she was! He hated women who flung texts or proverbs at you; and yet he did not hate her. She had a girl's flighty notions, born of crude contact with inferior minds, and perhaps over-much novel-reading.

"I do not exactly understand what a man must do to win your love," he said in one of those calm, intensely irritating tones. "I have chosen what suited me best,--culture, refinement, and the education that fits me for the sphere in which I am likely to move all my days,"

impressively. "It is true, much of the wisdom of the world is little to my taste. I do not know why a man should wade through a slough of evil for the sake of repenting afterward, for looking white in contrast to that foul blackness. The ninety and nine just ones seem to me the better example."

"I am afraid I shall not be able to make you understand," she went on, with a little hesitation. "Perhaps I have not the power or patience to shape a man's soul to a n.o.ble purpose or ambition. I want him strong and earnest, full of energy and that high sense of duty to all around him, not satisfied to drift down the stream in frivolous content, but to make the way better for his having gone over it. I want him true as steel to his friends, generous, yet uncompromising to his foes, to all evil; the kind of man who, if crushed down by fate to-day, could see some ray above his head to-morrow, who has sufficient moral fibre not to be rigidly bound by cla.s.s feelings and narrow prejudices."

Sylvie paused, startled at herself. She had never framed her hero in words before, and that she should do it for this man!

"These are the heroes of our youth, Miss Sylvie, and you are very young," in that insufferably patronizing tone.

"I am old enough to know what I want," she retorted, all the fiery blood in her pulses leaping to the charge. "I think, too, I can discern between the true worker, and him who is content with the frivolous outside show."

"Perhaps not. You have been advising me, now allow me a like privilege.

Do not imagine me actuated by jealousy,--that vice of the Moor is not in my nature. I have seen with some surprise that your fancies were for those beneath you in the social scale. A woman always loses in this dangerous experiment. She seldom raises her commonplace hero to a level with the G.o.ds, and is much more likely to be dragged down."

She turned suddenly, her face flaming scarlet. The indignation misled him. He took it as a sign of personal anger, and wondered if she could, if she _dared_, throw him over for that coa.r.s.e, stupid, blundering fellow.

"Yes," he continued, glad to stab her in a vulnerable point; "you certainly have made a mistake, if you think this soul an aspiring one. A boy who excels in brute strength and force merely, a man who makes a deliberate choice between the n.o.bler results of education and the common purposes of rude daily labor, will hardly rank with a knight of Arthur's time, even if some self-deceived woman chooses to lavish her affection upon him."

"If you mean Mr. Darcy"-- And she stood quite still, tremulous with pa.s.sion.

"I mean Mr. Darcy." She had not shown such delicate consideration for his feelings that he should hesitate. "I do not see how you, with your artistic tastes and refinement, can find companions.h.i.+p in such a nature.

I understand it very thoroughly. Beware, for you cannot plead even daffodil blindness, my fair Persephone."

Sylvie Barry could have struck the man beside her. All the pa.s.sion of her nature surged up in contempt, great waves of white heat. If a look could have annihilated, hers might. Even in the shady gloom, he saw the flas.h.i.+ng eye and quivering lip of scorn.

"Do not distress yourself about me," she answered, with suave bitterness. "Jack Darcy may be a mill-hand; but he has the honor, the white soul, of a gentleman! And you--you dare to trample on what was once a friends.h.i.+p!"

"I believe he was once my admiration because he used to show fight so easily. He was for marching West then, and doing some grand thing; but you see his hero days are gone by. Ten years from this he may be a demagogue, a rank socialist, whining about equality. Still, if I must congratulate you"--

She made a haughty gesture, and her first impulse was to let it go; but her truthful nature could not brook the implied deception.

"You may congratulate me upon the friends.h.i.+p alone," with a clear, sharp emphasis.

His shattered self-confidence returned suddenly, shaped to arrogance. If she was not entangled with Jack Darcy, there certainly was no one else.

"Sylvie," he began loftily, "this has been child's play, and I am heartily ashamed of my share of it. Let us go back, and forget it. You have had your tilt at windmills; so suppose we return to common sense.

You are still heart-free, it seems; and I beg pardon for repeating foolish gossip. Your aunt has accepted me as your suitor; my mother is waiting to receive you as a daughter; and I think," with some pride in his tone, "that few men can offer you a cleaner hand, or a better record. You will have a life of ease and leisure, and-- Why, Sylvie, you can teach _me_,--you can help me up these glowing heights."

"I have answered you!"

She seemed to grow tall and regal as she stood there by the gate, the long, arrowy ray of lamp-light from within illumining her proud, cold face, that could flush with such bewildering warmth. He discerned in some dim way that she had access to a life far above his; an atmosphere like h.o.a.r-frost surrounded her, raying off fine points, that thrust him farther away into darkness and coldness. Had something been taken out of his life?

The man's well-nigh imperturbable complacency had received a shock.

"Good-night," in a softer tone. One cannot break a pleasant friends.h.i.+p without a pang.

As one in a dream he heard the gate close, the soft footfall on the brick walk, and a waft of voices from within. Then it occurred to him that he, Frederic De Woolfe Lawrence, had been rejected by this little girl upon whose head he had meant to shower the blessing of marital protection, the regard of a soul that was not quite indifferent, after all. What was this dull pang somewhere in his symmetrical, well-kept body? Was it the night that made his pulses heavy and turgid?

Then he turned. "By Jove!" he muttered, "there's not another girl in the country that could have kept her fingers out of the governor's money-bags! Poor mother! What a disappointment for her! Of course Sylvie will marry Jack Darcy,--Pluto and Persephone again."

Then he softly whistled a stave of opera-music, and sauntered about leisurely. He had no fancy for facing his mother that night.