第43章

"Try to be contented, darling," continued the sweet, pleading voice. "We all love and admire you. No one was ever loved more dearly or better than you are. The days are rather long at times, but there are all the wonders and beauties of Nature and art."

"Nature and Art are all very well," cried Beatrice; "but give me life."

She turned her beautiful, restless face from the smiling sea; the south wind dancing over the yellow gorse caught up the words uttered in that clear, musical voice and carried them over the cliff to one who was lying with half-closed eyes under the shade of a large tree--a young man with a dark, half-Spanish face handsome with a coarse kind of beauty. He was lying there, resting upon the turf, enjoying the beauty of the morning. As the musical voice reached him, and the strange words fell upon his ear, he smiled and raised his head to see who uttered them.

He saw the young girls, but their faces were turned from him; those words range in his ears--"Nature and Art are all very well, but give me life."

Who was it longed for life? He understood the longing; he resolved to wait there until the girls went away. Again he heard the same voice.

"I shall leave you to your sails, Lillian. I wish those same boats would come to carry us away--I wish I had wings and could fly over the sea and see the bright, grand world that lies beyond it. Goodbye; I am tired of the never-ending wash of those long, low waves."

He saw a young girl rise from the fragrant heather and turn to descend the cliff. Quick as thought he rushed down by another path, and, turning back, contrived to meet her half-way.

Beatrice came singing down the cliff. Her humor, never the same ten minutes together, had suddenly changed. She remembered a new and beautiful song that Lady Earle had sent, and determined to go home and try it. There came no warning to her that bright summer morning. The south wind lifted the hair from her brow and wafted the fragrance of hawthorn buds and spring flowers to greet her, but it brought no warning message; the birds singing gayly, the sun shining so brightly could not tell her that the first link in a terrible chain was to be forged that morning.

Half-way down the cliff, where the path was steep and narrow, Beatrice suddenly met the stranger. A stranger was a rarity at the Elms. Only at rare intervals did an artist or a tourist seek shelter and hospitality at the old farm house. The stranger seemed to be a gentleman. For one moment both stood still; then, with a low bow, the gentleman stepped aside to let the young girl pass. As he did so, he noted the rare beauty of that brilliant face--he remembered the longing words.

"No wonder," he thought; "it is a sin for such a face as that to be hidden here."

The beauty of those magnificent eyes startled him. Who was she?

What could she be doing here? Beatrice turning again, saw the stranger looking eagerly after her, with profound admiration expressed in every feature of his face; and that admiring gaze, the first she had ever received in her life, sank deep into the vain, girlish heart.

He watched the graceful, slender figure until the turn of the road hid Beatrice from his view. He followed her at a safe distance, and saw her cross the long meadows that led to the Elms. Then Hugh Fernely waited with patience until one of the farm laborers came by. By judicious questioning he discovered much of the history of the beautiful young girl who longed for life. Her face haunted him--its brilliant, queenly beauty, the dark, radiant eyes. Come what might, Hugh Fernely said to himself, he must see her again.

On the following morning he saw the girls return to the cliff.

Lillian finished her picture. Ever and anon he heard Beatrice singing, in a low, rich voice, a song that had charmed her with its weird beauty:

"For men must work, and women must weep; And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep And goodbye to the bar and its moaning."

"I like those words, Lillian," he heard her say. "I wonder how soon it will be 'over' for me. Shall I ever weep, as the song says? I have never wept yet."

This morning the golden-haired sister left the cliff first, and Beatrice sat reading until the noonday sun shone upon the sea.

Her book charmed her; it was a story telling of the life she loved and longed for--of the gay, glad world. Unfortunately all the people in the book were noble, heroic, and ideal. The young girl, in her simplicity, believed that they who lived in the world she longed for were all like the people in her book.

When she left the path that led to the meadows, she saw by her side the stranger who had met her the day before. Again he bowed profoundly, and, with many well-expressed apologies, asked some trifling question about the road.

Beatrice replied briefly, but she could not help seeing the wonder of admiration in his face. Her own grew crimson under his gaze--he saw it, and his heart beat high with triumph. As Beatrice went through the meadows he walked by her side. She never quite remembered how it happened, but in a few minutes he was telling her how many years had passed since he had seen the spring in England. She forgot all restraint, all prudence, and raised her beautiful eyes to his.

"Ah, then," she cried, "you have seen the great world that lies over the wide sea."

"Yes," he replied, "I have seen it. I have been in strange, bright lands, so different from England that they seemed to belong to another world. I have seen many climes, bright skies, and glittering seas, where the spice islands lie."

As he spoke, in words that were full of wild, untutored eloquence, he saw the young girl's eyes riveted upon him. Sure of having roused her attention, he bowed, apologized for his intrusion, and left her.