Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall by Charles Major

C >> Charles Major >> Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

I was glad enough to go to bed, for my cousin was growing drunk, and drink
made a demon of this man, whose violence when sober was tempered by a
heart full of tenderness and love.

Next morning Sir George was feeling irritable from the effects of the
brandy he had drunk over night. At breakfast, in the presence of Lady
Crawford, Madge, and myself, he abruptly informed Dorothy that he was
about to give that young goddess to Lord James Stanley for his wife. He
told her of the arrangement he had made the day before with the Earl of
Derby. Lady Crawford looked toward her brother in surprise, and Madge
pushed her chair a little way back from the table with a startled
movement. Dorothy sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing fire and her
breast rising and falling like the storm-wrought pulsing of the sea. I
coughed warningly and placed my finger on my lips, making the sign of
silence to Dorothy. The girl made a wondrous and beautiful struggle
against her wrath, and in a moment all signs of ill-temper disappeared,
and her face took on an expression of sweet meekness which did not belong
there of right. She quietly sat down again, and when I looked at her, I
would have sworn that Griselda in the flesh was sitting opposite me. Sir
George was right. "Ways such as the girl had of late developed were
dangerous." Hell was in them to an extent little dreamed of by her father.
Breakfast was finished in silence. Dorothy did not come down to dinner at
noon, but Sir George did not mark her absence. At supper her place was
still vacant.

"Where is Doll?" cried Sir George, angrily. He had been drinking heavily
during the afternoon. "Where is Doll?" he demanded.

"She is on the terrace," answered Madge. "She said she did not want
supper."

"Tell your mistress to come to supper," said Sir George, speaking to one
of the servants. "You will find her on the terrace."

The servant left the room, but soon returned, saying that Mistress Dorothy
wanted no supper.

"Tell her to come to the table whether she wants supper or not. Tell her I
will put a stop to her moping about the place like a surly vixen," growled
Sir George.

"Don't send such a message by a servant," pleaded Lady Crawford.

"Then take it to her yourself, Dorothy," exclaimed her brother.

Dorothy returned with her aunt and meekly took her place at the table.

"I will have none of your moping and pouting," said Sir George, as Dorothy
was taking her chair.

The girl made no reply, but she did not eat.

"Eat your supper," her father commanded. "I tell you I will have no--"

"You would not have me eat if I am not hungry, would you, father?" she
asked softly.

"I'd have you hungry, you perverse wench."

"Then make me an appetite," returned the girl. I never heard more ominous
tones fall from human lips. They betokened a mood in which one could
easily do murder in cold blood, and I was surprised that Sir George did
not take warning and remain silent.

"I cannot make an appetite for you, fool," he replied testily.

"Then you cannot make me eat," retorted Dorothy.

"Ah, you would answer me, would you, you brazen, insolent huzzy," cried
her father, angrily.

Dorothy held up her hand warningly to Sir George, and uttered the one
word, "Father." Her voice sounded like the clear, low ring of steel as I
have heard it in the stillness of sunrise during a duel to the death.
Madge gently placed her hand in Dorothy's, but the caress met no response.

"Go to your room," answered Sir George.

Dorothy rose to her feet and spoke calmly: "I have not said that I would
disobey you in regard to this marriage which you have sought for me; and
your harshness, father, grows out of your effort to reconcile your
conscience with the outrage you would put upon your own flesh and
blood--your only child."

"Suffering God!" cried Sir George, frenzied with anger and drink. "Am I to
endure such insolence from my own child? The lawyers will be here
to-morrow. The contract will be signed, and, thank God, I shall soon be
rid of you. I'll place you in the hands of one who will break your
damnable will and curb your vixenish temper." Then he turned to Lady
Crawford. "Dorothy, if there is anything to do in the way of gowns and
women's trumpery in preparation for the wedding, begin at once, for the
ceremony shall come off within a fortnight."

This was beyond Dorothy's power to endure. Madge felt the storm coming and
clutched her by the arm in an effort to stop her, but nothing could have
done that.

"I marry Lord Stanley?" she asked in low, bell-like tones, full of
contempt and disdain. "Marry that creature? Father, you don't know me."

"By God, I know myself," retorted Sir George, "and I say--"

"Now hear me, father," she interrupted in a manner that silenced even
him. She bent forward, resting one fair hand upon the table, while she
held out her other arm bared to the elbow. "Hear what I say and take it
for the truth as if it had come from Holy Writ. I will open the veins in
this arm and will strew my blood in a gapless circle around Haddon Hall so
that you shall tread upon it whenever you go forth into the day or into
the night before I will marry the drunken idiot with whom you would curse
me. Ay, I will do more. I will kill you, if need be, should you try to
force him on me. Now, father, we understand each other. At least you
cannot fail to understand me. For the last time I warn you. Beware of me."

She gently pushed the chair back from the table, quietly adjusted the
sleeve which she had drawn upward from her wrist, and slowly walked out of
the room, softly humming the refrain of a roundelay. There was no trace of
excitement about the girl. Her brain was acting with the ease and
precision of a perfectly constructed machine. Sir George, by his violence
and cruelty, had made a fiend of this strong, passionate, tender heart.
That was all.

The supper, of course, was quickly finished, and the ladies left the room.

Sir George took to his bottle and remained with it till his servants put
him to bed. I slipped away from him and smoked a pipe in front of the
kitchen fire. Then I went early to my bed in Eagle Tower.

Dorothy went to her apartments. There she lay upon her bed, and for a time
her heart was like flint. Soon she thought of her precious golden heart
pierced with a silver arrow, and tears came to her eyes as she drew the
priceless treasure from her breast and breathed upon it a prayer to the
God of love for help. Her heart was soft again, soft only as hers could
be, and peace came to her as she pressed John's golden heart to her lips
and murmured over and over the words, "My love, my love, my love," and
murmuring fell asleep.

I wonder how many of the countless women of this world found peace,
comfort, and ecstasy in breathing those magic words yesterday? How many
have found them to-day? How many will find them to-morrow? No one can
tell; but this I know, they come to every woman at some time in her life,
righteously or unrighteously, as surely as her heart pulses.

That evening Jennie Faxton bore a letter to John, informing him of the
projected Stanley marriage. It asked him to meet the writer at Bowling
Green Gate, and begged him to help her if he could.

The small and intermittent remnants of conscience, sense of duty, and
caution which still remained in John's head--I will not say in John's
heart, for that was full to overflowing with something else--were quickly
banished by the unwelcome news in Dorothy's letter. His first impulse was
to kill Stanley; but John Manners was not an assassin, and a duel would
make public all he wished to conceal. He wished to conceal, among other
things, his presence at Rutland. He had two reasons for so desiring. First
in point of time was the urgent purpose with which he had come to
Derbyshire. That purpose was to further a plan for the rescue of Mary
Stuart and to bring her incognito to Rutland Castle as a refuge until
Elizabeth could be persuaded to receive her. Of this plan I knew nothing
till after the disastrous attempt to carry it out, of which I shall
hereafter tell you. The other reason why John wished his presence at
Rutland unknown was that if he were supposed to be in London, no one would
suspect him of knowing Dorothy Vernon.

You must remember there had been no overt love-making between John and
Dorothy up to that time. The scene at the gate approached perilously near
it, but the line between concealment and confession had not been crossed.
Mind you, I say there had been no love-making _between_ them. While
Dorothy had gone as far in that direction as a maiden should dare go--and
to tell the exact truth, a great deal farther--John had remained almost
silent for reasons already given you. He also felt a fear of the girl, and
failed to see in her conduct those signs of intense love which would have
been plainly discernible had not his perceptions been blinded by the fury
of his own infatuation. He had placed a curb on his passion and did not
really know its strength and power until he learned that another man was
soon to possess the girl he loved. Then life held but one purpose for him.
Thus, you see that when Dorothy was moaning, "My love, my love," and was
kissing the golden heart, she was taking a great deal for granted.
Perhaps, however, she better understood John's feeling for her than did he
himself. A woman's sixth sense, intuition, is a great help to her in such
cases. Perhaps the girl knew with intuitive confidence that her passion
was returned; and perhaps at first she found John's receptive mode of
wooing sweeter far than an aggressive attack would have been. It may be
also there was more of the serpent's cunning than of reticence in John's
conduct. He knew well the ways of women, and perhaps he realized that if
he would allow Dorothy to manage the entire affair she would do his wooing
for him much better than he could do it for himself. If you are a man, try
the plan upon the next woman whom you seek to win. If she happens to be
one who has full confidence in her charms, you will be surprised at the
result. Women lacking that confidence are restrained by fear and doubt.
But in no case have I much faith in the hammer-and-tongs process at the
opening of a campaign. Later on, of course--but you doubtless are quite as
well informed concerning this important subject as I. There is, however,
so much blundering in that branch of science that I have a mind to endow a
college at Oxford or at Paris in which shall be taught the gentle,
universally needed art of making love. What a noble attendance such a
college would draw. But I have wandered wofully from my story.

I must go back a short time in my narrative. A few days before my return
to Haddon Hall the great iron key to the gate in the wall east of Bowling
Green Hill was missed from the forester's closet where it had hung for a
century or more. Bowling Green Hill, as you know, is eastward from Haddon
Hall a distance of the fourth part of a mile, and the gate is east of the
hill about the same distance or less. A wall is built upon the east line
of the Haddon estate, and east of the wall lies a great trackless forest
belonging to the house of Devonshire. In olden times there had been a road
from Bakewell to Rowsley along the east side of the wall; but before Sir
George's seizin the road had been abandoned and the gate was not used. It
stood in a secluded, unfrequented spot, and Dorothy thought herself very
shrewd in choosing it for a trysting-place.

But as I told you, one day the key was missed. It was of no value or use,
and at first nothing was thought of its loss; but from time to time the
fact that it could not be found was spoken of as curious. All the servants
had been questioned in vain, and the loss of the key to Bowling Green Gate
soon took on the dignity of a mystery--a mystery soon to be solved, alas!
to Dorothy's undoing.

The afternoon of the day following the terrible scene between Sir George
and his daughter at the supper table, Dorothy rode forth alone upon her
mare Dolcy. From the window of my room in Eagle Tower I saw her go down
the west side of the Wye toward Rowsley. I ascended to the roof of the
tower, and from that elevation I saw her cross the river, and soon she was
lost to sight in the forest. At that time I knew nothing of the new
trysting-place, but I felt sure that Dorothy had gone out to seek John.
The sun shone brightly, and its gentle warmth enticed me to remain upon
the tower battlements, to muse, and to dream. I fetched my pipe and
tobacco from my room. I had been smoking at intervals for several months,
but had not entirely learned to like the weed, because of a slight nausea
which it invariably caused me to feel. But I thought by practice now and
again to inure myself to the habit, which was then so new and fashionable
among modish gentlemen. While I smoked I mused upon the past and present,
and tried to peer into the future--a fruitless task wherein we waste much
valuable time; a vain striving, like Eve's, after forbidden knowledge,
which, should we possess it, would destroy the little remnant of Eden
still existing on earth. Could we look forward only to our joys, a
knowledge of the future might be good to have; but imagine, if you can,
the horror of anticipating evils to come.

After a short time, a lotuslike dreaminess stole over me, and past and
future seemed to blend in a supreme present of contentment and rest. Then
I knew I had wooed and won Tobacco and that thenceforth I had at hand an
ever ready solace in time of trouble. At the end of an hour my dreaming
was disturbed by voices, which came distinctly up to me from the base of
the tower. I leaned over the battlements to listen, and what I heard gave
me alarm and concern such as all the tobacco in the world could not
assuage. I looked down the dizzy heights of Eagle Tower and saw Sir George
in conversation with Ben Shaw, a woodman. I had not heard the words first
spoken between them.

"Ay, ay, Sir George," said Ben, "they be there, by Bowling Green Gate,
now. I saw them twenty minutes since,--Mistress Vernon and a gentleman."

"Perhaps the gentleman is Sir Malcolm," answered my cousin. I drew back
from the battlements, and the woodman replied, "Perhaps he be, but I doubt
it."

There had been a partial reconciliation--sincere on Sir George's part, but
false and hollow on Dorothy's--which Madge had brought about between
father and daughter that morning. Sir George, who was sober and repentant
of his harshness, was inclined to be tender to Dorothy, though he still
insisted in the matter of the Stanley marriage. Dorothy's anger had
cooled, and cunning had taken its place. Sir George had asked her to
forgive him for the hard words he had spoken, and she had again led him to
believe that she would be dutiful and obedient. It is hard to determine,
as a question of right and wrong, whether Dorothy is to be condemned or
justified in the woful deception she practised upon her father. To use a
plain, ugly word, she lied to him without hesitation or pain of
conscience. Still, we must remember that, forty years ago, girls were
frequently forced, regardless of cries and piteous agony, into marriages
to which death would have been preferable. They were flogged into
obedience, imprisoned and starved into obedience, and alas! they were
sometimes killed in the course of punishment for disobedience by men of
Sir George's school and temper. I could give you at least one instance in
which a fair girl met her death from punishment inflicted by her father
because she would not consent to wed the man of his choice. Can we blame
Dorothy if she would lie or rob or do murder to avoid a fate which to her
would have been worse than death? When you find yourself condemning her,
now or hereafter in this history, if you are a man ask yourself this
question: "If I had a sweetheart in Dorothy's sad case, should I not wish
her to do as she did? Should I not wish, if it were possible by any
means, that she should save herself from the worst of fates, and should
save me from the agony of losing her to such a man as Sir George had
selected for Dorothy's husband? Is it not a sin to disobey the law of
self-preservation actively or passively?" Answer these questions as you
choose. As for myself, I say God bless Dorothy for lying. Perhaps I am in
error. Perhaps I am not. I but tell you the story of Dorothy as it
happened, and I am a poor hand at solving questions of right and wrong
where a beautiful woman is concerned. To my thinking, she usually is in
the right. In any case, she is sure to have the benefit of the doubt.

When Sir George heard the woodman's story, he started hurriedly toward
Bowling Green Gate.

Now I shall tell you of Dorothy's adventures after I saw her cross the
Wye.

When she reached the gate, John was waiting for her.

"Ah, Sir John, I am so glad you are here. That is, I am glad you are here
before I arrived--good even," said the girl, confusedly. Her heart again
was beating in a provoking manner, and her breath would not come with ease
and regularity. The rapid progress of the malady with which she was
afflicted or blessed was plainly discernible since the last meeting with
my friend, Sir John. That is, it would have been plain to any one but
John, whose ailment had taken a fatal turn and had progressed to the
ante-mortem state of blindness. By the help of the stimulating hope and
fear which Dorothy's letter had brought to him, he had planned an
elaborate conversation, and had determined to speak decisive words. He
hoped to receive from her the answer for which he longed; but his heart
and breath seemed to have conspired with Dorothy to make
intercommunication troublesome.

"I received your gracious letter, Mistress Vernon, and I thank you. I
was--I am--that is, my thanks are more than I--I can express."

"So I see," said the girl, half amused at John's condition, although it
was but little worse than her own. This universal malady, love, never
takes its blind form in women. It opens their eyes. Under its influence
they can see the truth through a millstone. The girl's heart jumped with
joy when she saw John's truth-telling manner, and composure quickly came
to her relief, though she still feigned confusion because she wished him
to see the truth in her as she had seen it in him. She well knew of his
blindness, and had almost begun to fear lest she would eventually be
compelled to tell him in words that which she so ardently wished him to
see for himself. She thought John was the blindest of his sex; but she
was, to a certain extent, mistaken. John was blind, as you already know,
but his reticence was not all due to a lack of sight. He at least had
reached the condition of a well-developed hope. He hoped the girl cared
for him. He would have fully believed it had it not been for the
difficulty he found in convincing himself that a goddess like Dorothy
could care for a man so unworthy as himself. Most modest persons are
self-respecting. That was John's condition; he was not vain.

"Jennie brought me your letter also," said the girl, laughing because she
was happy, though her merriment somewhat disconcerted John.

"It told me," she continued, "that you would come. I have it here in my
pocket--and--and the gate key." She determined this time to introduce the
key early in the engagement. "But I feared you might not want to come."
The cunning, the boldness, and the humility of the serpent was in the
girl. "That is, you know, I thought--perhaps--that is, I feared that you
might not come. Your father might have been ill, or you might have changed
your mind after you wrote the letter."

"No," answered John, whose face was beaming with joy. Here, truly, was a
goddess who could make the blind to see if she were but given a little
time.

"Do you mean that your father is not ill, or that you did not change your
mind?" asked Dorothy, whose face, as it should have been after such a
speech, was bent low while she struggled with the great iron key,
entangled in the pocket of her gown.

"I mean that I have not changed my mind," said John, who felt that the
time to speak had come. "There has been no change in me other than a new
access of eagerness with every hour, and a new longing to see you and to
hear your voice."

Dorothy felt a great thrill pass through her breast, and she knew that the
reward of her labors was at hand.

"Certainly," said the self-complacent girl, hardly conscious of her words,
so great was the joyous tumult in her heart, "I should have known."

There was another pause devoted to the key, with bended head. "But--but
you might have changed your mind," she continued, "and I might not have
known it, for, you see, I did not know your former state of mind; you have
never told me." Her tongue had led her further than she had intended to
go, and she blushed painfully, and I think, considering her words,
appropriately.

"My letter told you my state of mind. At least it told you of my intention
to come. I--I fear that I do not understand you," said John.

"I mean," she replied, with a saucy, fluttering little laugh as she looked
up from her conflict with the entangled key, "I mean that--that you don't
know what I mean. But here is the key at last, and--and--you may, if you
wish, come to this side of the gate."

She stepped forward to unlock the gate with an air that seemed to say,
"Now, John, you shall have a clear field."

But to her surprise she found that the lock had been removed. That
discovery brought back to John his wandering wits.

"Mistress Dorothy," he cried in tones of alarm, "I must not remain here.
We are suspected and are sure to be discovered. Your father has set a trap
for us. I care not for myself, but I would not bring upon you the trouble
and distress which would surely follow discovery. Let us quickly choose
another place and time of meeting. I pray you, sweet lady, meet me
to-morrow at this time near the white cliff back of Lathkil mill. I have
that to say to you which is the very blood of my heart. I must now leave
you at once."

He took her hand, and kissing it, started to leave through the open gate.

The girl caught his arm to detain him. "Say it now, John, say it now. I
have dreamed of it by night and by day. You know all, and I know all, and
I long to hear from your lips the words that will break down all barriers
between us." She had been carried away by the mad onrush of her passion.
She was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain, and she spoke because
she could not help it.

"I will speak, Dorothy, God help me! God help me, I will speak!" said
John, as he caught the girl to his breast in a fierce embrace. "I love
you, I love you! God Himself only knows how deeply, how passionately! I do
not know. I cannot fathom its depths. With all my heart and soul, with
every drop of blood that pulses through my veins, I love you--I adore you.
Give me your lips, my beauty, my Aphrodite, my queen!"

"There--they--are, John,--there they are. They are--all yours--all
yours--now! Oh, God! my blood is on fire." She buried her face on his
breast for shame, that he might not see her burning eyes and her scarlet
cheeks. Then after a time she cared not what he saw, and she lifted her
lips to his, a voluntary offering. The supreme emotions of the moment
drove all other consciousness from their souls.

"Tell me, Dorothy, that you will be my wife. Tell me, tell me!" cried
John.

"I will, I will, oh, how gladly, how gladly!"

"Tell me that no power on earth can force you to marry Lord Stanley. Tell
me that you will marry no man but me; that you will wait--wait for me
till--"

"I will marry no man but you, John, no man but you," said the girl,
whisperingly. Her head was thrown back from his breast that she might look
into his eyes, and that he might see the truth in hers. "I am all yours.
But oh, John, I cannot wait--I cannot! Do not ask me to wait. It would
kill me. I wear the golden heart you gave me, John," she continued, as she
nestled closer in his embrace. "I wear the golden heart always. It is
never from me, even for one little moment. I bear it always upon my heart,
John. Here it is." She drew from her breast the golden heart and kissed
it. Then she pressed it to his lips, and said: "I kiss it twenty times in
the day and in the night; ay, a hundred times. I do not know how often;
but now I kiss your real heart, John," and she kissed his breast, and then
stood tiptoe to lift her lips to his.

There was no room left now in John's heart for doubt that Dorothy Vernon
was his own forever and forever. She had convinced him beyond the reach of
fear or doubt. John forgot the lockless gate. He forgot everything but
Dorothy, and cruel time passed with a rapidity of which they were
unconscious. They were, however, brought back to consciousness by hearing
a long blast from the forester's bugle, and John immediately retreated
through the gate.

Dorothy then closed the gate and hastily seated herself upon a stone
bench against the Haddon side of the wall. She quickly assumed an attitude
of listless repose, and Dolcy, who was nibbling at the grass near by,
doubtless supposed that her mistress had come to Bowling Green Gate to
rest because it was a secluded place, and because she desired to be alone.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26