“Yes, I’ll be sure. And now, good-by, Elsie; you go your way and I’ll go home.”
He nodded to her carelessly, and then turned away, and the girl stood looking after him as he went. And there was infinite pain in her expression, infinite distress.
“And he loved me once,” she muttered; “he loved me once.”
These words seemed like an epitaph on her life’s happiness. She knew it was all over, and that the young man to whom she had given so much was weary of her; weary of the frail bondage by which she held him.
And, in truth, never was man more weary. Young Henderson’s face was black as night as he strode on after he had left the girl he called Elsie. She was a chain around his neck, an intolerable burden, from which he could see no way to free himself.
And yet he must be free! Margaret Churchill’s lovely face rose before him as he passed down the fields of waving corn. He would not give her up, he told himself; he would not let this folly of his almost boyhood come between himself and his fair love.
He remembered the days when he had first known Elsie Wray; the days when he used to ride past the pretty, rather picturesque wayside public house where her father lived, and where the handsome, motherless girl occasionally acted as barmaid.
He was just about nineteen when he had first spoken to her—a handsome, dark-browned lad—and, having been caught in a passing storm, he had taken shelter at the wayside house. Elsie was about his own age—perhaps a year younger—and these two had drifted first into a flirtation, and then, on the girl’s part at least, into a deep and passionate love.
It went on for years, always, young Henderson believed, in secret, on account of his father. The squire of Stourton was an irascible old gentleman, and would have allowed “no folly,” as he would have called it, between his son and a barmaid. Alas, for the poor girl! The young, ardent, handsome lover came night after night in the gloaming, and the two wandered together in the dewy fields, and sat on the lone hillsides, and talked of the days when they would be free to wed, and when there would be no partings between them any more.
So it went on until, in an evil hour for poor Elsie, young Henderson saw Margaret Churchill’s (the Mayflower’s) fairer face, and his first love-dream was over. Over for him but not for Elsie Wray, with all its bitter fruits. She could not believe at first that he had changed; it seemed impossible, and she so fond. Then his father died, and her hopes of speedy marriage revived. But there was always some excuse from the once ardent lover. It was too soon after his father’s death, his affairs were not settled, and so on.