Love Works Wonders: A Novel

by Charlotte M. Brame

SHADOW OF ABSENT LOVE.

Six years had passed since the marriage of the governess left Miss Darrell alone. She heard as constantly as ever from Sir Vane; he had made money rapidly. It was no longer the desire to make a fortune which kept him away, but the fact that in the part of the country where he was great danger existed, and that, having been placed there in a situation of trust, he could not well leave it; so of late a hopeless tone had crept into his letters. He made no reference to coming home; and Pauline, so quick, so sensitive, saw in this reticence the shadow of her own presentiment.

Six years had changed Pauline Darrell from a beautiful girl to a magnificent woman; her beauty was of that grand and queenly kind that of itself is a noble dowry. The years had but added to it. They had given a more statuesque grace to the perfect figure; they had added tenderness, thought, and spirituality to the face; they had given to her beauty a charm that it had never worn in her younger days.

Miss Darrell, of Darrell Court, had made for herself a wonderful reputation. There was no estate in England so well managed as hers. From one end to the other the Darrell domain was, people said, a garden. Pauline had done away with the old cottages and ill-drained farm-houses, and in their stead pretty and commodious buildings had been erected. She had fought a long and fierce battle with ignorance and prejudice, and she had won.

She had established schools where children were taught, first to be good Christians, and then good citizens, and where useful knowledge was made much of. She had erected almshouses for the poor, and a church where rich and poor, old and young, could worship God together. The people about her rose up and called her blessed; tenants, dependents, servants, all had but one word for her, and that was of highest praise. To do good seemed the object of her life, and she had succeeded so far.

No young queen was ever more popular or more beloved than this lady with her sweet, grave smile, her tender, womanly ways, her unconscious grandeur of life. She made no stir, no demonstration, though she was the head of a grand old race, the representative of an old honored family, the holder of a great inheritance; she simply did her duty as nobly as she knew how to do it. There was no thought of self left in her, her whole energies were directed for the good of others. If Sir Oswald could have known how the home he loved was cared for, he would have been proud of his successor. The hall itself, the park, the grounds, were all in perfect order. People wondered how it was all arranged by this lady, who never seemed hurried nor talked of the work she did.

Pauline occupied herself incessantly, for the bright hopes of girlhood, she felt, were hers no longer; she had admitted that the romance, the passion, the poetry of her youth were unforgotten, but she tried to think them dead. People wondered at her gravity. She had many admirers, but she never showed the least partiality for any of them. There seemed to be some shadow over her, and only those who knew her story knew what it was—that it was the shadow of her absent love.

She was standing one day in the library alone, the same library where so much of what had been eventful in her life had happened. The morning had been a busy one; tenants, agents, business people of all kinds had been there, and Pauline felt tired.

Darrell Court, the grand inheritance she had loved and in some measure longed for, was hers; she was richer than she had ever dreamed of being, and, as she looked round on the treasures collected in the library, she thought to herself with a sigh, "Of what avail are they, save to make others happy?" She would have given them all to be by Vane's side, no matter how great their poverty, no matter what they had to undergo together; but now it seemed that this bright young love of hers was to wither away, to be heard of no more.

So from the beautiful lips came a deep sigh; she was tired, wearied with the work and incessant care that the management of her estates entailed. She did not own it even to herself, but she longed for the presence of the only being whom she loved.