Only a girl's love
To save her life she could not have suppressed her threat.
"I do not fear Lord Leycester, or any man," he said. "Where you are
concerned I fear only--yourself."
"Do you intend giving me the explanation, sir?" she demanded,
impetuously.
"I have stepped in between him and his prey," he went on, still
gravely, "because I thought, I hoped, that were time given you, though
it were at the last moment, that you would see the danger which lay
before you, and draw back."
"Thanks!" she said, scornfully--"that is your explanation. Having
afforded it, be kind enough to open that door and let me depart."
"Stay!" he said, and for the first time his voice broke and showed
signs of the storm that was raging within him. "Stay, Stella--I
implore, I beseech of you! Think, consider for one moment to what doom
your feet are carrying you! The man proposes--has the audacity to
propose--a clandestine elopement, a secret marriage; he treats you as
if you were not worthy to be his wife, as if you were the dirt under
his feet! Do you think, dare you, blinded as you are by a momentary
passion, dare you hope that any good can spring from such an union,
that any happiness can follow such a shameful marriage? Dare you hope
that this man's love--love!--which will not brave the temporary anger
and contempt of his relations, can be strong enough to last a lifetime?
Think, Stella! He is ashamed of you already; he, the heir to Wyndward,
is ashamed to make you his bride before the world. He must lower and
degrade you by a secret ceremony. What is his love compared with
mine--with mine?" and in the fierce emotion of the moment he put his
hand upon her arm and held her.
With a fierce, angry scorn, which no one who knew Stella Etheridge
could have thought her capable of, she flung his hand from her and
confronted him, her beautiful face looking lovely in its scorn and
wrath.
"Silence!" she exclaimed, her breast heaving, her eyes darting
lightning. "You--you coward! You dare to speak thus to me, a weak,
defenseless girl, whom you have entrapped into listening to you! I
dare you to utter them to him--him, the man you traduce and slander.
You speak of love; you know not what it is! You speak of shame----"
she paused, the word seemed to overcome her. "Shame," she repeated,
struggling for breath and composure; "you do not know what that is.
Shall I tell you? I have never felt it until now; I feel it now,
because I have been weak enough to remain and listen to you! It is
shameful that your hand should have touched me! It is shameful that I
should have listened to your protestations of love--love! You speak of
the shame which he would bring upon me! Well, then--listen for once
and all!--if such shame were to befall me from his hand, I would go
to meet it, yes, and welcome it, rather than take from yours all the
honor which you could extend to me! You say that I am going to ruin and
unhappiness! So be it; I accept your words--to silence you, learn from
my own lips that I would rather bear such shame and misery with him,
than happiness and honor with you. Have I--have I," she panted, "spoken
plainly enough?" and she looked down at him with passionate scorn. He
was white, white as death, his hands hung at his side clinched and
burning; his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth, and
render speech impossible.
Her scorn lashed him; every word fell like the thong of a knout, and
cut into his heart; and all the while his eyes rested on hers with
anguished entreaty.
"Spare me," he cried, hoarsely, at last. "Spare me! I have tried to
spare you!"
"You--spare me!" she retorted, with a short contemptuous laugh.
"Yes," he said, wetting his lips, "I have tried to spare you! I tried
argument, entreaty, all to no purpose! Now--now you compel me to use
force!"
She glanced at the door, though she seemed to know instinctively that
he did not mean physical force.
"I would have saved you without this last step," he said, slowly,
almost inaudibly. "I call upon you to remember this in the after-time.
That not until you had repulsed all my efforts to turn you from your
purpose--not until you had lashed me with your scorn and contempt,
did I take up this last weapon. If in using it--though I use it as
mercifully as I can--it turns and wounds you, bear this in mind, that
not until the last did I direct it against you!"
Stella put her hand to her lips; they were trembling with excitement.
"I will not hear another word," she said. "I care as little for your
threat--this is a threat----"
"It is a threat," he said, with deadly calmness.
"As I do for your entreaties. You cannot harm me."
"No," he said; "but I can harm those you love."
She smiled, and moved to the door.
"Stay," he said. "For their sakes, remain and hear me to the end."
She paused.
"You speak of shame," he said, "and fear it as naught. You do not
know what it means, and--and--I forget the fearful words that stained
your lips. But there are others, those you love, for whom shame means
death--worse than death."
She looked at him with a smile of contemptuous disbelief. She did not
believe one word of the vague threat, not one word.
"Believe me," he said, "there hangs above the heads of those you love
a shame as deadly and awful as that sword which hung above the head of
Damocles. It hangs by a single thread which I, and I alone, can sever.
Say but the word and I can cast aside that shame. Turn from me to
him--to him--and I cut the thread and the sword falls!"
Stella laughed scornfully.
"You have mistaken your vocation," she said. "You were intended for the
stage, Mr. Adelstone. I regret that I have no further time to waste
upon your efforts. Permit me to go."
"Go, then," he said, "and the misery of those dear to you be upon your
hands, for you will have dealt it, not I! Go! But mark me, before you
have reached the man who has ensnared you that shame will have fallen;
a shame so bitter that it will yawn like a gulf between you and him; a
gulf which no time can ever bridge over."
"It--it is a lie!" she breathed, her eyes fixed upon his white face,
but she paused and did not go.
He inclined his head.
"No," he said, "it is true, an awful, shameful truth. You will wait and
listen?"
She looked at him for a moment in silence.
"I will wait five minutes--just five minutes," she said, and she
pointed to the clock. "And I warn you--it is I who warn you now--that
by no word will I attempt to screen you from the punishment which will
meet this lie."
"I am content," he said, and there was something in the cold tone of
assured triumph that struck to her heart.
CHAPTER XXIX.
"Five minutes!" said Stella, warningly; and she turned her face from
him, and kept her eyes fixed on the clock.
"It will suffice," said Jasper. "I have to ask you to bear with me
while I tell you a short history. I will mention no names--you yourself
will be able to supply them. All I have to ask of you further is that
you will hear me to the end. The history is of father and son."
Stella did not move; she thought that he referred to the earl and
Leycester. She had determined to listen calmly until the five minutes
were expired, and then to go--to go without a word.
"The father was an eminent painter"--Stella started slightly, but kept
her eyes fixed on the clock--"a man who was highly gifted, of a rare
and noble mind, and possessed of undeniable genius. Even as a young man
his gifts were meeting with acknowledgment. He married a woman above
him in station, beautiful, and fashionable, but altogether unworthy
of him. As might have been expected, the marriage turned out ill. The
wife, having nothing in common with her high-souled husband, plunged
into the world, and was swallowed up in its vortex. I do not wish to
speak of her further; she brought him shame."
Stella paled to the lips.
"Shame so deep that he cast aside his ambition and left the world.
Casting away his old life, and separating himself entirely from
it--separating himself from the child which the woman who had
betrayed him had born to him--he settled in a remote country village,
forgotten and effaced. The son was brought up by guardians appointed
by the father, who could never bring himself to see him. This boy
went to school, to college, was launched, so to speak, on the world
without a father's care. The evil results which usually follow such a
starting followed here. The boy, left to himself, or at best to the
hired guardianship of a tutor, plunged into life. He was a handsome,
high-spirited boy, and found, as is usual, ready companionship.
Folly--I will not say vice--worked its usual charm; the boy, alone and
uncared for, was led astray. In an unthinking moment he committed a
crime----"
Stella, white and breathless, turned upon him.
"It is false!" she breathed.
He looked at her steadily.
"Committed a crime. It was done unthinkingly, on the spur of the
moment; but it was done irrevocably. The punishment for the crime was
a heavy one--he was doomed to spend the best part of his life as a
convict----"
Stella moaned and put up her hand to her eyes.
"It is not true."
"Doomed to a felon's expiation. Think of it. A handsome, high-born,
high-spirited, perhaps gifted lad, doomed to a felon's, a convict's
fate! Can you not picture him, working in chains, clad in yellow,
branded with shame----"
Stella leaned against the door, and hid her face.
"It is false--false!" she moaned; but she felt that it was true.
"From that doom--one--one whom you have lashed with your scorn--stepped
forward to save him."
"You?"
"I," he said--"even I!"
She turned to him slightly.
"You did this?"
He inclined his head.
"I did it," he repeated. "But for me he would be, at this moment,
working out his sentence, the just sentence of the outraged law."
Stella was silent, regarding him with eyes distended with horror.
"And he--he knew it?" she murmured, brokenly.
"No," he said. "He did not know it; he does not know it even now."
Stella breathed a sigh, then shuddered as she remembered how the boy
Frank had insulted and scorned this silent, inflexible man, who had
saved him from a felon's fate.
"He did not know it!" she said. "Forgive him!"
He smiled a strange smile.
"The lad is nothing to me," he said. "I have nothing to forgive. One
does not feel angered at the attack of a gnat; one brushes the insect
off, or lets it remain as the case may be. This lad is nothing to
me. So far as he is concerned I might have allowed him to take his
punishment. I saved him, not for his sake, but for another's."
Stella leaned against the door. She was beginning to feel the meshes of
the net that was drawing closer and closer around her.
"For another," he continued, "I saved him for your sake."
She moistened her parched lips and raised her eyes.
"I--I am very grateful," she murmured.
His face flushed slightly.
"I did not seek your gratitude; I did not desire that you should even
know that I had done this thing. Neither he nor you would ever have
known it, but--but for this that has happened. It would have gone down
with me into my grave--a secret. It would have done so, although you
had refused me your love, although you should have given your heart to
another. If"--and he paused--"if that other had been a man worthy of
you." Stella's face flushed, and her eyes flashed, but she remembered
all that he had done, and averted her gaze from him. "If that other
had been one likely to have insured your happiness, I would have gone
my way and remained silent; but it is not so. This man, this Lord
Leycester, is one who will effect your ruin, one from whom I must--I
will--save you. It is he who rendered this disclosure necessary."