In Silk Attire: A Novel. William Black
you; I will lie down in my grave, if it will please you, and be happy enough if I knew you wished it. I will do anything for you, Harry; but not that – not that!"
Wherewith he caught her in his arms, and kissed her – passionately, despairingly.
"My angel, my dearest, are you mad, to talk in that way? Do you not see that the great favour would fall upon me only? Is there a woman in all England to be compared with you, my queen, my darling? What matters your being an actress to me? It is you, not the actress, whom I beg for a wife; and if you would see in what way I should ask you for so great a blessing – here at your feet I kneel, you an empress, and I your slave."
And so he knelt down before her, and took her hand and looked up into her eyes. That may have been the fashion in which lovers spoke in those days, or it may be that the strong passion of the young man thrilled him into using stage language. But there could be no doubt about the absolute sincerity of the words; and the girl, with a sort of sad, wistful pleasure in her face, heard his urgent prayer.
"See, Annie, am I low enough? For God's sake do not mock me by saying you cannot be my wife because you are an actress. You are to me the noblest and tenderest of women, and there is nothing I hope for but your love. What do you say, Annie? Will you not speak a word to me?"
She stooped down and gently kissed away the tears from his cheeks.
"I am ashamed of your goodness, dear," she said, in her low, intense voice, "and I wish you had not asked me. But oh! Harry, Harry, how can I hide that I love you with my whole heart!"
She placed her hand on his soft brown hair – that hand which half London would have died to have kissed – and looked for a moment into his love-stricken eyes. In that brief moment the compact was sealed between them, and they were thenceforth husband and wife. She uttered a few words – rather indistinctly, to be sure – of farewell; and then she lightly kissed his forehead and left the room.
He rose, bewildered, pale, and full of an indescribable happiness; and then he went downstairs, and out into the open air. There was a light in her bedroom as he turned and looked up; and he said:
"I leave my heart in her dear keeping, for good or ill."
Shortly afterwards he made his appearance in Mr. John Palk's rooms; and by that time there was nothing on his face but a happy, audacious trust in the future; an expression which immediately struck one of his friends who was seated at one of the small tables.
"Knottingley, come here," said this gentleman. "I see you bring good luck in your face. Back me!"
"I will. A hundred guineas on Lord Wriothesly's next hand!"
"Done with you, Harry," said Mr. John Palk, to whom a hundred guineas was an acceptable sum, now that he had managed, by aid of ace, king, and queen (with occasional help from a racing favourite) to scatter one of the finest estates possessed by any private gentleman in England.
As it happened, too, Lord Wriothesly and his partner won; and Mr. Palk made a little grimace. At a sign from Ormond, he followed the young marquis into a corner, where their conversation could not be overheard.
"You'll have to take paper, Harry," said Palk.
"What do you mean?"
"The hundred guineas – "
"Confound your hundred guineas! Sit down, and listen to me. I am an expatriated man."
"How?" said Mr. Palk, quietly taking a chair.
"Miss Napier is going to be my wife; and I know she will never have the courage to confront my friends – rather, I should say, I shall never allow her to sue in any way for recognition from them. You see? Then I shouldn't like to have my wife brought face to face with people who have paid to see her; and so – and so, Jack, I am going to give up England."
"You are paying a long price for wedded happiness, Harry."
"There I differ with you, Jack. But never mind. I want you to help me in getting up a quiet little wedding down in Berks; for I know she will never consent to meeting my relatives and all the riff-raff of my acquaintances – "
"Thank you, Harry."
"And I am sure she will be glad to leave the stage at once, if that is possible."
"What a pace you have! You're at the end of everything when other people are thinking of the beginning. But, in good faith, Harry, you are to be congratulated; and you may rely on my services and secrecy to the last."
And to Harry Ormond, when he went outside that night, it seemed as if all the air around him were full of music.
CHAPTER II.
THE LOOK BACK
How still the lake of Thun lay, under the fierce heat! The intense blue of it stretched out and over to the opposite shore, and there lost itself in the soft green reflection of the land; while the only interruption of the perfect surface was a great belt of ruffled light stirred by the wind underneath the promontory of Spiez. Then overhead the misty purple mass of the Niessen; and beyond that again the snowy peaks of the Schreckhorn, Mönch, and Jungfrau glimmering through the faint and luminous haze of the sunlight; and over these the serene blue of a Swiss sky. Down in front of the house the lake narrowed to the sharp point at which it breaks suddenly away into the rapid, surging green-white waters of the Aar; and at this moment, as seen from the open window, two men in a low flat boat were vainly endeavouring to make head against the powerful current.
At the window sate a little girl of about four years old, with large dark grey eyes, a bright, clear face, and magnificent jet-black curls; a doll-looking little thing, perhaps, but for the unusual depth and meaning of those soft, large eyes. All at once she put her elbows on a tiny card-table opposite her, clasped her hands, and said, with a piteous intonation:
"Nu, Nu; oh, I don't know what to do!"
Her father, who had been lying silent and listless on a couch in the shadow of the room, looked up and asked her what was the matter.
"My doll is lying out in the sun," she said, in accents of comic despair, "and the poor thing must be getting a headache, and I am not allowed, Nu says, to go out just now."
"What a little actress she is!" her father muttered, as he returned, with a slight laugh, to his day dreaming.
And she was an actress – every atom of her. She had not the least self-consciousness; the assuming of appropriate speech and gesture was to her more natural than the bashful sense of personality with which most children are burdened. A true actress will smile quite naturally into the Polyphemus eye of a camera; a false actress will be conscious of deceit even in dressing herself to have her portrait taken. This child of four had the self-abandonment of genius in her mimetic efforts. She coaxed her mother and wheedled her father with an artless art which was quite apparent; and her power of copying the tender phrases she heard used was only equalled by the dramatic manner in which she delivered them. The appeal to "Nu" – which was a contraction for "nurse" – was her invariable method of expressing intense despair. If her mamma reprimanded her; if she lost one of her toys; or if she merely felt out of sorts – it was all the same: down went the elbows and out came the pitiful exclamation, "Oh, Nu, Nu, I don't know what to do." This little girl was the daughter of the Marquis of Knottingley, who now lay upon the couch over there; and it is of her that the present history purposes to speak.
For Harry Ormond had been right in his surmise. The young actress begged him not to insist upon her meeting his friends and acquaintances; and he, to whom no sacrifice was then great enough to show his gratitude for her love, readily consented to go abroad after the quiet little ceremony which took place down in Berkshire. They went to Thun, and lived in this house which lay some short distance from the village, overlooking the beautiful lake; and here Lord Knottingley forgot his old world, as he was by it forgotten. His marriage was known only to a few, though it was suspected by many, and coupled with the unexpected withdrawal from the stage of Annie Napier. In the end, however, the matter dropped into oblivion, and Harry Ormond was no more thought of.
For several years they lived there a still and peaceful existence, varied only by an occasional excursion southward into Italy. The halo of his romantic passion still