A Double Knot. George Manville Fenn
the busy world, to be held sacred, that he must seek us out and cast such a blight upon it!”
“Oh, hush, mother!” wailed the girl. “I love him—I love him.”
“Love him! Idiot! Baby! To be led away by the smooth words of the first soft-spoken villain you meet.”
“You shall not call him villain, mamma,” cried the girl passionately. “He loves me, and I am to be his wife.”
The girl flashed up for a moment with anger, but only to lie back the next instant faint and with half-closed eyes.
“His wife! Are you such a fool that you believe this?” cried the elder woman bitterly. “His wife! There, cast aside that shadow at once, for it is a delusion.”
“No, no, mother, dear mother, he has promised me that I shall be his wife, and I believe him.”
“Yes,” said the mother, “as thousands of daughters of Eve have believed before. There, cast away that thought, poor fool, and think now of hiding your sin from the world which will shun you as if you had the plague.”
“Mother!” cried the girl piteously.
“Don’t talk to me!” cried the woman fiercely, and she began to pace the room; tall, swarthy, and handsome for her years, her mobile countenance betraying the workings of the passionate spirit within her.
“Mother! Would I had never been one! My life has been a curse to me.”
“No, no; don’t say that, dear.”
“It has, I tell you. There’s something wrong in our blood, I suppose. Look at your brother.”
“Poor Julian!” sighed the girl.
“Poor Julian!” cried the woman scornfully. “Of course he is poor, and he deserves it. He must have been mad.”
“But he loved her, mamma, so dearly.”
“Loved!” cried the woman with a wild intensity of rage in her deep rich voice and gesture, as she spat on the floor. “Curse love! Curse it! What has it done for me? A few sickly embraces—a few years of what the world calls happiness—and then a widowhood of poverty and misery.”
“Mamma, you will kill me if you talk like that.”
“Then I will talk like that, and save myself from temptation more than I can bear,” cried the woman fiercely. “What has love done for the son of whom I was so proud—my gallant-looking, handsome boy? Why, with his bold, noble, Spanish face and dark eyes, he might have wed some heiress, married whom he liked—and what does he do? turns himself into a galley slave.”
“Mamma, what are you saying?” cried the girl faintly.
“The truth. What has he done? Married a woman without a sou, and had to accept that post at the mines. Isn’t that being a galley slave?”
“But he loved Delia, mamma.”
“Loved her! Curse love! I tell you. The ass! The idiot, to be led away by that sickly, washed-out creature—the Honourable Delia Dymcox,” she continued, with an intensity of scorn in her tones.
“But she is a lady, mamma.”
“Lady? The family are paupers, and, forsooth, they must look down on him—on us because we have no blood. Well, she is justly punished, and he too. I hope they like Auvergne.”
“Oh, mother,” sighed the girl weakly, “you are very cruel.”
“Cruel? I wish I had been cruel enough to have strangled you both at birth. I wish our family were at an end—that it would die out as Julian’s brats waste away there in that hot, dry, sun-cursed region.”
“You do not mean it, dear?”
“I do, Mary; I swear I do. Oh that I could have been so weak as to marry as I did—to be cursed with two such children!”
“You talk so, dear, because you are angry with me,” sighed the girl. “I know you loved poor papa dearly.”
“Pish! You are like him.”
“Yes, mamma, and poor Julian has always been so like you.”
There was silence then in the half-shadowed room, while the mother sat sternly gazing out at the stream that rippled by the cottage, dancing in the sunlight and bathing the roots of the willows that kissed its dimpling, silvery surface. The verdant meadows stretched far away rich in the lush grass and many flowers that dotted them with touches of light. All without looked bright and joyous, as a lark high poised poured forth his lay, which seemed to vibrate in the blue arch of heaven, and then fall in silvery fragments slowly down to earth.
The girl lay crying silently, the tears moistening her soft white pillow, as she gazed piteously from time to time at her mother’s averted face, half hidden from her by the white curtain she held aside to gaze from the window.
“Can you—can you see him coming, mamma?” faltered the girl at last.
“Whom? The doctor?” was the cold response, as the curtain was allowed to fall back in its place. “No, I have not sent for one. Why should we publish our shame?”
“Our shame, mamma?”
“Yes, our shame. Is it not as bitter for me? Live or die, I shall send for no doctor here.” Again there was silence, and the elder woman slowly paced the room, till, passing near the bed, a soft white arm stole forth, and caught her hand.
“You are very cruel to me, mother. Oh, do look; look again. See if he is coming.”
“If he is coming!” cried the elder. “Are you mad as well as weak? You will never see him more. Poor fool! I believe even his name is only assumed.”
“I shall,” cried the girl with energy, “and he will come. He loves me too dearly to forsake me now. He is a gentleman and the soul of honour.”
Her face lit up, and the joyous look of love shone in her eyes as she gazed defiantly at her mother, who looked back at her, half pitying, half mocking her faith. Then, in spite of herself, she started, for steps were heard on the path beneath, and as the girl struggled up once more to her elbow, and craned her neck towards the window, voices were heard speaking at a little distance.
“There, there,” cried the girl, with a sob of joy, as she sank back laughing hysterically. “What did I say? He loves me—he loves me, and he has come.”
Mrs. Riversley ran to the window, and drew aside the curtain furtively as a couple of young men, gentlemen evidently, and one carrying a trout-rod, walked slowly by, following the winding path that led round by the great gravel-pit in the wood that bordered the stream, and soon after they disappeared amidst the trees.
“That was his step,” cried the girl at last. “Who was with him, mamma?”
“Captain Millet.”
“Poor Mr. Millet!” said the girl softly; and then, with the anxious troubled look fading from her countenance to give place to one of quiet content as a smile played round her lips, she lay very still, with half-closed eyes listening for the returning steps.
Twice she started up to listen, but only to sink back again, very calm and patient, her full faith that the man she loved would return beaming from every feature of her handsome young face.
“Mother,” she said at last softly; and Mrs. Riversley turned towards her.
“What do you want?”
“Is it not time you brought it back to me, mother—that you laid it by my side?”
There was no reply, and the girl looked up pleadingly.
“I should like him to see it when he comes,” she said softly, and a wondrous look of love dawned in her pale face, causing a strange pang in her