A song which was very popular when I was a boy, says, ‘Most folks fall in love, no doubt, some time or other.’ It might with equal truth have said that most folks fall in love two or three times over. I am sure it was the case with me. It was also my fate to do what, I am told, is one of the commonest things in the world—that is, to fall violently in love with a person entirely out of my own circle; not below it, like the king and the beggar-maid, but a great deal above me; with a girl, too, who was as proud and haughty and stony as Juno or a sphinx.
In the time to which I refer, nearly fifty years ago now—I am seventy-one next birthday—the railway system was in its infancy, but yet was spreading fast, and I was one of the earliest servants. It was in no exalted position that I served. My father was dead; my mother rented a small cottage on the land of the nobleman in whose service her husband had lived and died; and this nobleman recommended me to a railway Company which had just constructed a branch through his estates. I was at first a porter, but afterwards a signalman, and, as a great favour, I was assigned a post on the branch just mentioned, close to my own house. The signal was not far from the junction of the branch with the main line; a very lonely spot for a long way in either direction, although there was a thriving town some five miles down the branch; and there was a siding close by where the trucks used in the scanty local traffic were collected.
There were some cottages near my crossing—I ought to have said that there was a level crossing not far from my box—in one of these I lived; a sprinkling of farmhouses and several very good houses of a higher class were within sight. In one of these latter, not by any means the grandest, but handsome enough for all that, lived Squire Cleabyrn; and it was with his only daughter, Miss Beatrice, that I chose to fall in love. For that matter, I daresay a score of other young fellows as poor as myself were as earnestly in love with her as I was, but they probably had sufficient sense not to show their folly. I did show mine. I could not help it; and when I recall all I felt and suffered at the time, I feel I must retract my admission that others were as much in love with her as myself, but had the sense to conceal it; such a thing would have been impossible. They could not have concealed it; they might have refrained from talking about it. I did not talk; but had they seen the girl as often as I did, and looked into her face as closely as I did, they could not have hidden their infatuation from her. In return, she would have looked at them with the same haughty indifference—which yet had a something of contemptuous wonder in it—as I was treated with.
Not that my story has anything of the Lady of Lyons flavour about it; I was no Claude to an English Pauline; but this girl, this Miss Beatrice, was so amazingly beautiful that she was famed for full twenty miles around. In addition, she was one of the best horsewomen in the county, and this enabled me to see more of her than I should otherwise have done. She used to ride out, sometimes with a servant only, sometimes with a party, nearly every day; and nearly every day she came through the gates at my crossing. I tried not to look at her, feeling and knowing that there sparkled from my eager eyes more feeling than I should have allowed to escape me—but in vain. I could not withhold my gaze from that cold, dark face—she was not a blonde beauty; golden hair was not the rage in those days—or from her large, deep, unfathomable eyes, that looked through me and past me as though I had not been there, or was at best no more than a part of the barrier I swung open for her passage. Yet these eyes, as I even then knew but too well, read me to the core, while they seemed to ignore me.
I am almost ashamed to own it now, and even at this distance of time it makes my cheeks tingle to recall it, but I have wasted a whole afternoon, when I had a ‘turn off,’ in hope of seeing Miss Cleabyrn.
Her father’s house stood on a knoll, with smooth open lawns sloping down from it on all sides, so that from my signal-box I could see when any one was walking in the front of the mansion, and when a party assembled to ride out. Well, I have actually lingered, on some feeble pretence, for four or five hours about the signal-box, in hope that she might walk on the lawn, or that she might mount and ride through our gates.
I well remember that it was on one of these afternoons that Miss Beatrice rode through with a small party. Ah! I recall them easily enough. There was one other lady, and three gentlemen. To open the gate for them, for her, was the opportunity I had been longing, waiting for, and wasting my few hours of holiday for; so I offered to do this to assist my mate, who had relieved me, and who was glad enough to be spared the labour; and I caught a full glance from the eyes of Miss Beatrice. The look was one in which she seemed to exchange glances with me. I knew it meant nothing, that it was all a delusion, and yet it would be enough to haunt me for days. I knew that also. I had never seen her look so beautiful before, and I felt my cheeks and brow turn burning hot in the instant I met this glance.
They passed. I watched them to the last—I always did—and I saw her turn her head towards the gentleman who rode by her side. The movement brought her profile so plainly in view that I could see she was smiling. As I watched her, the gentleman turned round and looked in my direction. He was smiling also; it was something beyond a smile with him, and I then reddened more with shame, than I had before done with excitement, for I knew he was laughing at me. So Miss Cleabyrn must have been laughing also; and at what? I was the subject of their ridicule, and it served me right. Yes; I knew that at the moment, but to know it did not make the bitter pang less painful.
I went back to my comrade at the signal-box. He, too, had noticed the group, and said, as I entered the hut: ‘That was the party from Elm Knoll, wasn’t it?—Ah! I thought so; and of course that was the celebrated Miss Cleabyrn. You know who that was riding by her side, I suppose?’
‘No,’ I said, answering as calmly as I could; I was almost afraid to trust my voice.