CHAPTER VI.

LORD CARTHEW’S WOOING.

Mine host at the wayside inn, where the two young men had left their horses on the preceding day, was duly surprised and impressed by the appearance of one of his guests in company with no less a personage than Miss Cranstoun of the Chase.

Sir Philip Cranstoun was the innkeeper’s landlord, and although he had hardly ever caught more than a fleeting glimpse of the young lady, he knew who she must be by the livery of the groom, who rode at some distance behind the young lady, and her cavalier, on a sturdy cob not given to exerting himself.

“I assure you, sir, that I never had the least idea that you and Lord Carthew wouldn’t come back to pay your little trifle here, as you suggest,” the man said, all deference and smiles. “Seeing as you’d left a hundred guineas or more of horseflesh in my stables, it wasn’t likely, sir, was it?”

Stella at once begged to see the horses, and Lord Carthew hastened to help her down from her saddle, a proceeding which took far too little time in his opinion, for Stella was lithe and active as a sailor lad. Gathering her neat, dark green habit into her small hand in its dogskin glove, she followed the landlord and her guest to the inn stables, while the groom held the horses upon which they had come.

Black Bess and the chestnut cob duly made their appearance, and were stroked and made much of by Stella, who, somewhat to Lord Carthew’s chagrin, manifested a decided preference for the big black mare.

“She isn’t what I call a ’andsome ’oss, either, if I may make so bold as to say so,” observed the old hostler of the inn, critically. “At least, not for such a young gentleman as his lordship. But she looks like a good ’un to go and to stay. This ’ere chestnut of yours, sir, ’as a lot more blood in ’im now, ’asn’t ’e?”

“He has a long pedigree, certainly,” returned Lord Carthew. “But my friend weighs fourteen stone against my ten, and wants more bone and muscle than I do in his mount.”

“That ’e do, sure enough, sir. And this ’ere animal,” signifying Black Bess, “she’d carry the Mayor and Corporation o’ London by turns all day long and be as frisky as a colt at bedtime. She’s as strong as a dray ’oss, she is.”

Stella’s fair cheek was pressed against Black Bess’ long, black satin neck, and her soft, cooing voice, beloved of all dumb things, was murmuring friendly speeches into the ears of the mare, which were pricked up, and moving quickly backward and forward in appreciation of the attention paid her.

Lord Carthew meanwhile was increasing Stella’s liking for him by giving minute directions as to the food for the animals until they would be wanted again by their masters. Stella would have suggested that they should be sent to the Chase stables, but Lady Cranstoun had given her no instruction on that point and fear of her father restrained her.

“I should like to take you for some pretty ride in the neighborhood,” she explained to Claud after they had again mounted their horses, “but in that case I must ask the way of the groom. Except for a few mad spins late at night, I have been very little outside the park, except in a closed carriage with mamma. You see, there are a good many square miles enclosed round the Chase, so that I get plenty of riding and some capital hurdles and ditches, too. But Sir Philip has forbidden me to go outside at all.”

“Don’t you want to sometimes?”

“Why, of course I do,” she answered simply. “Just because I am ordered not to, for no other reason. In the evenings, when Sir Philip is away, I ride as near the boundaries of the Chase enclosure as possible, and sometimes I can’t resist taking a jump over and cantering along the roads in the early moonlight. Sometimes, as if he knew we were doing wrong, Zephyr flies so fast his hoofs seem hardly to touch the ground, and I am sure, as we flash by the few country folk trudging along the lonely roads, they think we are wraiths, and go home and make stories about us.”

“Why you are a modern version of Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott,’” he exclaimed, and then quoted in clear, rhythmical fashion:

“‘Four gray walls and four gray towers.’

That’s a good description of the Chase, isn’t it? even if in your case they do not ‘overlook a space of flowers.’ And the continuation applies:

“‘But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly, From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot. And by the moon the reaper, weary, Piling sheaves in upland airy, Listening, whispers, “’Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.”’”

She had reined in her horse and was listening in eager delight.

“I have never read a word of Tennyson,” she said. “The only poetry-books allowed me have been Milton and Wordsworth and some selected readings from Pope and Shakespeare. Sir Philip says that reading poetry fosters romantic and ridiculous notions, and that I should only read the poets his mother read, and know the others by name. But I like what you have quoted better than anything I have ever read yet. What became of the Lady of Shalott?”

“Oh, you must not take her for your prototype,” he said quickly. “She used to ‘weave by night and day, a magic web with colors gay,’ and she was never allowed to look out of the window to see the surly village churls, and red cloaks of the market girls, pass onward to Shalott. She had to content herself with seeing their reflections in a magic mirror which hung on a wall in her room. A curse was to fall upon her should she turn from its reflections and gaze on the realities of life, until one day, when there passed by ‘two young lovers lately wed; “I am half sick of shadows,” said the Lady of Shalott.’”

“But that was not the end, surely?” asked Stella, with childlike eagerness. “The day came, of course, when she looked out on life itself, braving any curse which might befall her.”

“Oh, yes; trust her for that. She was a woman as well as a fairy, you see:

“‘A bow-shot from her bower-eaves He rode between the barley sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves, And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot.’

He was her fate, I suppose. Anyhow, as a modern writer would say, the ‘exact psychological moment of her life had arrived,’ and:

“‘She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro’ the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; “The curse is come upon me,” cried The Lady of Shalott.’”

“And what was the end?” asked Stella. She had followed each line, conjuring up mental pictures of the scenes. But bold Sir Lancelot she saw in a brown-eyed giant, with a golden mustache drooping over a mouth that was a little hard in outline. And for the lady it was pardonable girlish egotism if she saw herself, living as she did in semi-imprisonment, confined within those “four gray walls” and the demesnes adjacent. What did she herself know more of life than was pictured in the old-fashioned books to which she had access, or hinted at in the prim and guarded talk of her instructors? Of life as it really was, its passion, its pain, its hopes, and fears, and sorrows, its mad delights and long regrets, its brilliant colors and heavy shadows, she knew no more than the Lady of Shalott learned from her mirror as she caught sight of the village maidens and gay young knights reflected there. Until _he_ came! And how would it end after that, she wanted to know.

“Oh, poor Lady of Shalott, she had better have been content with her looking-glass and her needlework,” said Lord Carthew. “Apparently, she went straight to her death resignedly, after falling in love at first sight with Lancelot. She ‘found a boat, beneath a willow left afloat, and round about the prow she wrote _The Lady of Shalott_.’ In this she was wafted up along the river to ‘many-towered Camelot,’ where all the gay knights and ladies were enjoying themselves, foremost among them being Sir Lancelot of the Lake, lover of Queen Guinevere:

“‘Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by, Dead-pale between the houses high, Silent into Camelot.’

Then they all came out and looked at her, and read her name on the prow.

“‘Who is this? and what is here?’ And in the lighted palace near, Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the knights of Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, ‘She has a lovely face, God in His mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.’”

Tears had started to Stella’s eyes as Lord Carthew finished reciting the verses.

“Sir Lancelot never guessed that she loved him, then?” she asked.

“Not in that poem. But you are taking it quite seriously, Miss Cranstoun. I shall be angry with myself if I have saddened you.”

“You will think me very silly,” she said, “but I never get a chance of reading poetry, or of listening to stories told. And you repeat poetry so well, and tell tales in such an interesting manner, I could listen for weeks at a stretch.”

His heart leaped up with delight at her words; but when he spoke again, after a slight pause, he had perfect control of his voice.

“Do you know,” he said, “that during the last half hour I have been thinking a great deal of what you were telling me a little while ago about your dread of the consequences of going to London. You have been amiable enough to treat me as your friend, and in that character I have been trying to discover some way out of your difficulties. You are tired of living here, and find the life intolerably dull, do you not? You long to see the world with your own eyes, to travel, to go out and come in as you like, to be no longer repressed and restrained, and blamed when you do not deserve it? You would like to visit strange countries, to sail in ships to foreign places, to see something of gayety and brightness in the great cities of the world?”

“Yes; oh, yes!”

Her gypsy blood had mantled in her cheeks, her breath came quickly, and her eyes sparkled with excitement at the pictures his words conjured up before her.

“And you also long, I am sure, sometimes, when you are alone in that great dreary house,” he went on, softly, “for love and affection, for a tenderness that shall wrap you round, and guard you from all worry and trouble, for the arms of some one who would love you above everything else in the world clasped round you; for the loving companionship of some one who would think of you always, understand you in everything, and answer your mind with his, for love that is friendship, and friendship that is love; the love that will grow gray beside you, and find you dearer and more beautiful when your youth is past than even you are now.”

She faltered, blushed, and looked at him quickly.

“I have mamma----” she was beginning, when he stopped her by laying his hand lightly upon her own, which held the reins on her horse’s neck.

“Wait a moment, please, Miss Cranstoun. I don’t want you to speak until you have heard me out. I love you, and I want you to be my wife. Don’t start and draw back. There is nothing after all so very wonderful in such a statement. I knew when I first saw you last night that I should ask you to marry me, and since that moment I have only been waiting for the terms to come to me. I am not in the least attractive, I know. But there’s this to be in my favor, that I am too plain to be conceited, or to have my head turned by women’s flatteries. You are not happy here, and you lead a caged-bird sort of life. As my wife, you would be free as air, and your will would be law. Of course I don’t expect you to love me--not for a long time yet. But in time,” he added, wistfully, “in time, as you realize that you are everything in the world to me, I think you will grow to like me a little. You see, we are such good friends, and I should understand you, and that is something to begin with, is it not? And we would travel all over Europe--all over the world, if you like. Of course,” he went on in some confusion, noting her look of surprise, “it is not as though I were very rich. But I have some money saved, quite enough to enable me to give my bride a long and delightful wedding tour by sea and land before starting for my Canadian farm. Don’t answer me directly--don’t say anything at all just now. Think it over, and let me know. I will speak to Lady Cranstoun when we get back, and you can consult with her.”

“But, Mr. Pritchard,” she said, turning her great, startled eyes upon him, “do you think for a moment my father would consent? He would be furiously angry, and horribly insulting at the mere idea. Don’t, pray don’t speak of this any more. Let us forget all about it, and go on being merely friends.”

“That is impossible,” he answered, gently. “Tell me truthfully, Miss Cranstoun, is your objection to a marriage with me based solely upon the fear of your father’s disapproval?”

“Yes--no--that is--I don’t want to marry you, Mr. Pritchard! I have never thought of such a thing!”

The words burst from her lips, and a bewildered, troubled look clouded her fair face.

“Well, I will give you time to think of it,” he said, quietly. “As to Sir Philip’s objections, I have little doubt that I can overcome _them_.”

“You don’t know my father,” she said, with meaning. “Sometimes I wonder why he hates me us he does. But I am certain of one thing: he would far rather see me dead than married to any one who is not my superior in rank and fortune.”

“Still I don’t fear his opposition,” returned Lord Carthew, with a smile. “I am better off than you know, and may possibly even succeed to a title some day.”

“Had you told me that at first,” she said reproachfully, “we should not have been such friends.”

“You would soon forget it,” he said, smiling again. “A title, after all, is not a thing a man wears on his coat. May I take it that if your parents consent you will at least not decide against me?”

“Don’t!” she exclaimed. “You have surprised and startled me so much I can hardly think coherently. You see, I am not used to receiving offers of marriage. This is my first. I suppose it is a great honor, but--let’s have a gallop, shall we? The horses must be quite tired of walking.”

Away she flew, at break-neck speed, after a shake of the reins and a word to Zephyr, who needed no whip to urge his pace, and gave Lord Carthew work indeed to follow him.

Flushed and out of breath, they at length drew up their steeds before the steps of the Chase, having re-entered the lodge gates after a spirited canter through the lanes, the horses neck to neck part of the time, but eventually with Zephyr a long way ahead. Stella was radiant and laughing as Lord Carthew sprang from his horse to assist her to dismount, the groom having been left jolting steadily far behind. Lord Carthew felt at that moment happier and more hopeful than he had ever been before, and both were talking and laughing in merry boy and girl fashion upon the result of their extempore race as they ascended the broad, shallow steps to the entrance of the house.

Before they had had time to touch the bell, the massive doors were opened to them, and just within the hall immediately before them stood the master of the house, pale, gray-haired, gray-eyed, his square face, with its handsome clear-cut features and unpleasantly sinister expression, shown up by the clear sunshine of an April day.

Lord Carthew glanced at Stella. All gayety and brightness had died from her face at sight of her father, and instead came that look of fixed self-repression and endurance which he had once before noted there.

“So you have been enjoying an early ride,” Sir Philip remarked to his daughter, in grating tones. “Have you and this gentleman been unattended, may I ask? If not, where is the groom?”

“His horse could not keep up with the others,” Stella answered, briefly.

“And who is this gentleman? May I have the honor of being presented to him?”

“Mr. Pritchard, my father, Sir Philip Cranstoun,” said the girl, in level tones, from which all the glad youthful ring had departed. “If you will excuse me,” she added, “I will go and change my habit.”

With a little formal bend of the head, she left them, and walked in stately fashion up the staircase until she passed out of their sight, when she suddenly quickened her steps, and flew like a bird down the corridor to Lady Cranstoun’s room.

She found that lady lying on a couch, very white and feeble, wrapped in a cashmere morning-gown, and trembling in every limb.

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” Lady Cranstoun murmured, wringing her limp, white hands, “I am so thankful that you have come back. Your father has returned, and has been asking me questions. He compelled me to tell him where you were. I expected a storm, but he said nothing, which seems so much more dangerous. I am in such terror of what he may say to you.”

Stella drew a footstool to the side of Lady Cranstoun’s sofa, and taking one of her hands in both her own, gently kissed it, and rubbed her cheek against it.

“Mamma,” she said, “how would you like to leave the Chase, and come and stay with me in a nice house, where every one would love you, and no one would bully and frighten you, and where you would have nice servants instead of spies, and where your relations would be honored and welcomed, instead of being insulted whenever they came to visit you?”

“It sounds delightful,” returned the poor lady, sighing, “but, of course, it is impossible. What put such ideas into your head?”

“Mr. Pritchard has just asked me to marry him.”

Lady Cranstoun sat up on her sofa.

“My dear, you astonish me!” she exclaimed. “It is so extremely sudden.”

“He says he decided to propose to me as soon as he saw me yesterday,” returned Stella, demurely.

“But it is utterly out of the question. Of course he is a gentleman, and well educated, and has very agreeable manners; but, my dear, he told me himself that he is a farmer’s son, and has neither money nor family. Oh, dear--oh dear! it is all my fault for allowing you to be so much with him. But he seemed so little like a love-making sort of man, so plain and intellectual, I never dreamed any harm would come of it. I did certainly suggest to Dr. Graham that I ought not to leave you together while we were playing chess; but he reassured me so strongly that I thought no more about it. Sir Philip will be furious. He will never forgive me. And you--my poor dear child--I hope, oh, I do hope, that you have not grown fond of him.”

“Don’t worry, dear mamma. I don’t care a bit about him, at least not in that way. He is very clever, and very kind, and, I believe, very good, too, and I am sure he is fond of me, and would be very good to both of us; and it would be lovely, wouldn’t it, to be free of the Chase forever? As to his farm in Canada, he says it doesn’t matter about going to that yet, and that he has a lot more money saved than any one knows of, and that he will take me all over the world. You know Dr. Graham has always said a voyage to the Cape would do you good, and I thought of that directly; we would all go to the Cape together in a sailing ship. Think,” she exclaimed, springing up from her kneeling position, and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the room, “how beautiful it would be to be upon the great, wide sea, which I have only once seen in my life, with the bright sun sparkling on the waves, and you and I on deck under an awning, such as I have read about in books of travel; you on a deck-chair, and I mixing you your iced lemonade, and reading aloud while beautiful warm breezes blew over you and made you well; and above all,” here she came and knelt by Lady Cranstoun’s side, and lowered her voice to an impressive whisper, “with _no Sir Philip_!”

“Hush, hush, dear!” the elder lady exclaimed, nervously glancing at the door. “In your picture you leave out the man, I see. But what does it matter? Even if you loved him, and wanted to marry him for other reasons than to escape from this house, your father would not hear of it. He has said thousands of times that you _must_ marry a title. Now, if it had only been Lord Carthew----”

“Don’t, mamma!” exclaimed the girl, for the first time blushing scarlet. “Lord Carthew detests me. Anyhow, we were not talking of him. Mr. Pritchard isn’t a bit afraid of Sir Philip. He says if _he_ is the only obstruction, he can soon remove _that_. It appears he is coming into a title and fortune, and can prove it to Sir Philip. But even then,” she added, “I couldn’t marry him, could I, without loving him?”

“I should like to see you happy with a good husband, my darling,” said Lady Cranstoun, tears coming into her faded eyes as she stroked the girl’s cheek. “Of course, I would much prefer you to marry a man of good birth and of some fortune; but your happiness is the chief thing.”

A little later, Stella, going down to the drawing room for a novel which Lady Cranstoun was reading, was joined there by Lord Carthew.

“I have spoken to your father,” he said.

“What did he say?” inquired Stella, curiously.

“He offers no objection against me, provided I can succeed in winning your affections.”

“I am quite sure Sir Philip didn’t say _that_,” she exclaimed, laughing. “He wouldn’t think my affections had anything to do with the matter.”

“But they have everything to do with it, from my point of view,” he said, standing before her, and looking steadfastly into her face. “I don’t expect or hope that you will love me yet. But if you will marry me, I will engage that you shall be a great deal happier than you are now.”

“That might easily be, now that Sir Philip has returned.”

She spoke half under her breath, and as it were involuntarily, and then stood a few moments, reflecting. Lord Carthew was a little, a very little, shorter than she, and even such a fancy-free maiden as Stella had her ideals of the man she might some day grow to love. Like most very young girls’ ideals, he was of exaggerated height and length of limb. Lord Carthew was of pale and sallow complexion, in spite of the fact that he usually enjoyed excellent health. Gazing at him thus in the sunlight, and regarding him for the first time in the light of a possible husband, Stella noted that his deep-set, intelligent eyes were of a greenish-gray, and set too near together in his head for beauty or symmetry. Herself a brunette, she admired fair, florid skins and light hair in others. Lord Carthew was clean-shaved, and Stella’s conventional ideal invariably wore a golden mustache, similar to the one on the face of the wounded man upstairs. Lord Carthew’s upper lip was long, and his lower jaw slightly protruded. To a student of physiognomy, his mouth and chin clearly indicated an intense loyalty and fidelity in love and friendship, combined with a bull-dog obstinacy and tenacity of purpose, and his whole face denoted unusual intelligence, will, and power of loving.

But Stella was a young girl of eighteen, and saw none of these things. Her feminine instinct taught her that this man was an honorable gentleman, but what she particularly noted with dissatisfaction was that, in moments of repressed excitement, as in the present instance, Lord Carthew’s eyes and eyebrows twitched in a nervous fashion peculiar to some oversensitive temperaments.

Her survey over, she turned away with a half-sigh. Why was not this man, who loved her, more like that other man, who disliked her? But the next moment she tried to put that thought away as humiliating. She was certain Lord Carthew would be very good to her, and to her mamma also. And oh! to be free from Sir Philip’s sneering, and bullying, and hectoring!

“Only tell me one thing,” Lord Carthew said at last. “Have I a rival?”

Stella flushed deeply, but answered on the instant.

“No, no! How could you possibly have? I have hardly spoken to a man before, except Sir Philip, and the doctor, and my teachers. No, it isn’t that I love any one else, but--but----”

“But you don’t love me? Well, that would be impossible. There is nothing about me to make a beautiful young girl fall in love at first sight. But, my dear Miss Cranstoun, you have certainly beauty enough for two!”

She laughed and blushed with pleasure. She had so far in her life had hardly any compliments.

“Would you take mamma away from here as well?” she asked. “I mean, if--if I ever said yes.”

“Of course I would, if she would come. She is my kinswoman, you know--at least, my friend’s kinswoman.”

“I’ll think about it, and tell you later,” she said, springing away with one of her swift, bird-like movements, and was gone before he could speak again.

On the way to her own room, she passed the apartments which had first been occupied by the first Lady Cranstoun, and which were now given to the supposed Lord Carthew. The doors both of the bedroom and sitting-room were wide open. Stella glanced into the latter, and perceived the wounded man lying fully dressed on a sofa near the fire, apparently asleep, for his eyes were closed and his dark eyelashes rested on his cheek. He looked paler than usual, but handsomer than ever, with the extra touch of delicacy imparted by loss of blood and unaccustomed weakness.

Stella looked again, and creeping in, stood gazing down upon him until her breath came quickly, and tears gathered in her eyes. Under his half-closed lids, Hilary was watching her, and when he saw her red lip quiver and her arms involuntarily moving toward him, his self-control broke down. Suddenly stretching up his right arm, he drew her head down to his, and pressed his lips passionately to hers.