LXXI
When I entered C—— in the late afternoon I was met by a very different reception from any which had ever been accorded me before. It began at the station. News travels fast, especially when it concerns people already in the public eye, and in every face I saw, and in every handshake offered me, I read the welcome due to the change in my circumstances made by Edgar’s choice of a wife. The Edgar whom they had held in preference above all others was a delightful fellow, a companion in a thousand and of a nature rich and romantic enough to give up fortune and great prestige for love; but he was no longer the Edgar of Quenton Court, and they meant me to realize it.
And I did. But there was one whose judgment I sought—whose judgment I awaited—whom I must see and understand before I could return these amenities with all the grace which they demanded. There was nothing for me in this open and unabashed homage, rendered after weeks of dislike and suspicion, if the welcome I should not fail to receive from Orpha’s courtesy should be shot through with the sorrow of a loss too great for any love of mine to offset.
So I hastened and came to Quenton Court, and entering there found the court ablaze with color and every servant which the house contained drawn up in order to receive me. It was English, but then by birth I am an Englishman and the tribute pleased me. For their faces were no longer darkened by distrust and some even were brightened by liking; and were I to remain master here—
But that was yet to be determined; and when they saw with what an eager glance I searched the gallery for the coming of their youthful mistress, they filed quickly away till I was left alone with the leaping water and the rainbow hues and the countless memories of joy and terror with which the place was teeming.
Orpha had a favorite collie which from the first had shown a preference for my company that was sometimes embarrassing but oftener pleasing, since it gave me an opportunity to whisper many secrets in his ear. As I stood there with my eyes on the gallery, he came running to me with so many evidences of affection that I was fain to take it as an omen that all would be well with me when she who held him dear would greet me in her turn.
When would she come? The music of the falling drops plashing in their basin behind me was sweet, but I longed for the tones of her voice. Why did she linger? Dare I guess, when at last I heard her footfall in the gallery above, and caught the glimpse of her figure, first in one opening of its lattice work and then in another as she advanced towards the stairs which were all that now separated us, unless it were the sorrow whose ravages in her tender breast she might seek to hide, and might succeed in hiding from every eye but mine?
No, I would guess at nothing. I would wait; but my heart leaped high, and when she had passed the curve marking the turn of the great staircase, I bounded forward and so had the sweetest vision that ever comes to love—the descent, from tread to tread of the lady of one’s heart into the arms which have yearned for her in hope and in doubt for many weary days.
For I knew before she reached me that she loved me. It was in her garb of white, filmy and virginal, in her eager, yet timid step, in the glow of youth—of joyous expectation which gave radiance to her beauty and warmth to my own breast. But I said not a word nor did I move from my position at the foot of the stairs till she reached the last step but one and paused; then I uttered her name.
Had I uttered it before? Had she ever heard it before? Surely not as at that moment. For her eyes, as she slowly lifted them to mine, had a look of wonder in them which grew as I went on to say:
“Before I speak a word of all that has been burning in my heart since first I saw you from the gallery above us, I want you to know that I consider all the splendor surrounding us as yours, both by right of birth and the love of your father. I am ready to sign it all over—what we see and what we do not see—if you desire to possess it in freedom, or think you would be happier with a mate of your own choosing. I love you. There! I have said it, Orpha—but I love you so well that I would rather lose all that goes with your hand than be a drag upon your life, meant as you are for peace and joy and an unhampered existence. Do you believe that?”
“Yes, I believe that. But—” Oh, the delicious naïveté of her smile, bringing every dimple into play and lighting up into radiance the gravity of her gaze, “why should you think that I might want to be free to live in this great house alone? For me, that would be desolation.”
“Desolation because you would be alone or because—” even now I hardly dared to say it—“because it would be life without reality—without love? Orpha, I must know;—know beyond the shadow of a doubt. I cannot take the great gift bequeathed me by your father, unless with it receive the greatest gift of all—your undivided heart. You are young and very lovely—a treasure which many men will crave. I should never be satisfied for you to be merely content. I want you to know the thrill—the ecstasy of love—such love as I feel for you—”
I could not go on. The pressure of all the past was upon me. The story of the days and nights when in rapture and in tragedy she was my chief thought, my one unfailing inspiration to hold to the right and to dare misapprehension and the calumny of those who saw in me an interloper here without conscience or mercy, passed in one wild phantasmagoria through my mind, rendering me speechless.
With that fine intuition of hers—or perhaps, because she had shared alike my pains and my infinite horrors—she respected my silence till the time came for words and then she spoke but one:
“Quenton!”
Had she ever spoken it before? Or had I ever heard it as it fell at this moment from her lips? Never. It linked us two together. It gave the nay to all my doubts. I felt sure now, sure; and yet such is the hunger of a lover’s heart that I wanted her assurance in words. Would she grant me that?
Yes; but it came very softly and with a delicate aloofness at first which gave me the keenest delight.
“When you spoke of the first time you saw me and said it was from the gallery above us, you spoke as if life had begun for you that night. Did you never think that possibly it might have begun for me also? That content had revealed itself as content, not love? That I was happy that what we had expected to take place that night did not take place—that—that—”
Here her aloofness all vanished and her soul looked through her eyes. We were very near, but the collie was leaping about us, and the place was large and the gorgeousness of it all overpowering; so I contented myself with laying my hand softly on hers where it pressed against the edge of the final pillar supporting the lattice work.
“Let us go into the library,” I whispered.
But she led me elsewhere. Quieting the dog, she drew me away into a narrow hall, the purpose of which I had never understood till I had learned the secret of the hidden stairway and how this hall denoted the space which the lower end of the inn’s outside stairway had formerly occupied. Pausing, she gave me an earnest look, then, speaking very softly:
“It was here—on the steps which once united the ground with those still remaining above, that my father and my mother pledged themselves to each other in a love that has survived death. Shall we—”
She said no more: I had her in my arms and life had begun for us in very truth.