A Country Sweetheart. Dora Russell
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.
And now for the first time she had heard from some friend that he went to Woodside Farm, and, naturally, as Miss Churchill was considered the prettiest girl in all the country round, her jealousy was aroused. She, however, little guessed how far her false lover had committed himself with his new love. He had, in fact, asked Margaret Churchill to be his wife, and though she had said him nay, he still held determinately to his purpose.
“No one and nothing shall come between us,” he muttered, with gloomy emphasis, with his teeth set hard, as he walked on homeward after his stormy interview with Elsie. And there was a look on his face, a dark, savage look, that boded ill for the poor girl who had loved him too well.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. TEMPLE.
“I can not get that girl’s face out of my head,” John Temple thought more than once, as he walked back to the Hall. Her beauty had indeed a wonderful charm for him. He had seen and known many pretty women, but to his mind none so fair and sweet as the Mayflower. And he liked to think of her by this name.
“She is just like a flower,” he told himself. “Ah! that such a face should ever fade!”
This idea made him more thoughtful. He began to muse on the brief tenure of earthly things. And as he approached the stately house that in all probability would one day be his, he was thinking thus still.
“I may never come here,” he thought, looking at the old Hall, with the summer sunshine falling on its gray walls; “never, nor child of mine.”
A shadow passed over his face; he struck impatiently with his walking stick at a tall thistle growing by the wayside, and there was a cloud still on his brow as he entered the hall, and went up the broad staircase that led to the bedroom appropriated to his use.
As he passed down one of the corridors, a tall lady in black suddenly opened one of the doors and appeared before him. She was very pale, and her dark eyes were gleaming as though she were laboring under strong mental excitement.
She looked at John Temple, and then came out on the corridor and confronted him.
“So,” she said, “you have come to take my boy’s place?”
Then John knew at once who she was. This was his uncle’s wife, the bereaved mother, who had lost her only child. He bowed low, and a look of pity came into his gray eyes.
“I have felt very much,” he said, “for your great grief.”
“It has benefited you, at any rate,” she answered, bitterly.
“I can not feel it a benefit at such a cost.”
She looked at him keenly as he said this, and then her faced softened.
“You can not tell what he was to me,” she murmured in a broken voice; “my only one, my only one!”
A sudden passion of tears here came to her relief. Her bosom heaved and her whole form was convulsed, and John Temple naturally felt exceedingly disconcerted. He tried to say some consoling words; he endeavored to take one of her trembling hands. But the sound of her sobs soon attracted the attention of someone within the bedroom from which she had come out. A respectable maid appeared and endeavored to persuade her to return.
“Oh, madam! do not give way so,” she said; “I was sure it was a pity you should see—this gentleman so soon. But she would see you, sir,” she added, looking at John Temple.
“If my presence distresses you,” said John, courteously, looking pityingly at the weeping woman, “I shall leave the Hall at once.”
“What matter is it, what matter is it!” moaned Mrs. Temple; “nothing matters to me now!”
With this she turned away and went back into the bedroom, and the maid hastily closed the door after her, and John saw her no more. But the incident affected him; her grief was evidently so deep and heartrending; her bitter words to him only the natural outpouring of her troubled heart.
“Poor woman,” thought John, and he said nothing to his uncle of this meeting when they dined together in the evening.
The squire again spoke to John of the property and his tenants.
“I have improved some of the farm holdings very much during the last few years,” he said; “at Woodside Farm especially the whole of the outbuildings have been renewed.”
“Ah,” said John, interested, “at Woodside Farm?”
“Yes, that is one of the best farms on the property, and is let to a very respectable man named Churchill. Suppose we walk over to-morrow morning, and I will show you the place?”
John, nothing loath, at once assented.
“The house is old and somewhat picturesque,” continued the squire, “and now that the outbuildings are in such good order, I consider Woodside a sort of model place.”
John expressed himself desirous of seeing it, and he doubtless was. He had not forgotten that Woodside was the Mayflower’s home, and he wished again to look on her fair face.
“There can be no harm in it,” he thought; “it is a very innocent pleasure indeed to admire a pretty girl.”
Accordingly at breakfast the next morning he reminded the squire of his proposition of the night before.
“Didn’t you say, sir,” he said, “that we had to go over and see some model farm or other this morning?”
“Yes, to be sure, Woodside Farm,” answered the squire, “but it had gone out of my head, as things sometimes do now. I am glad you reminded me of it.”
The uncle and nephew accordingly started together almost immediately breakfast was over.
“We will get there, I think, before Churchill gets away among his fields,” said the squire. “I should like you to see him, for I believe him to be a highly respectable man.”
It was a bright, fresh morning, and John Temple enjoyed the walk. The waving mazes of uncut corn; the hedge-rows scented with the meadow-sweet; the cattle standing under the trees, made to his mind a pleasant picture.
“After all, the country is charming,” he said, raising his