CHAPTER XI.

UNREQUITED LOVE.

"Good gracious, Miss Walsingham! Is it possible that this can be you?"

He seized her hand with a pressure which told of his delight; his tones

were thrilling with glad excitement; his face was beaming with joy at

this queer meeting.

He drew her up from her rough seat, and, still retaining her hand, made

her walk with him, as if he was determined not to lose her again, and he

feasted his eyes upon her face, utterly heedless of the group of

gayly-dressed people he had left, and rattled on with a storm of

inquiries.

"Where did you disappear to? No one could give me any satisfaction about

you, and I sought you in every direction. Come away from this confounded

dock. What are you doing here alone? Will you walk with me, and let me

have a conversation with you? Don't deny me this time, Miss Walsingham.

We're not at Hautville Park."

They walked through the crooked lanes of the town, and took a road which

led anon to mown fields, and to furze commons, and to holts of scrawny

hazel, where the red clouds of evening could gaze upon their deeper

reflections, unbroken by toiling barge, or floating timber, or

stationary ships; and where pleasant willows made flickering shadows,

and dipped into the rippling current.

"Now," said the young duke, when nothing but the bleating of lambs or

the lowing of oxen was likely to interrupt them, "tell me why you left

Hautville Park, and what you are doing here?"

"Why do you put me through such an inquisition?" asked Margaret. "When I

left Hautville Park I wished to be dropped by Lady Juliana's friends.

Your grace will confer an obligation by remembering this."

"I do not aspire to the honor of being Lady Juliana Ducie's friend,

therefore beg to be considered exempt from your prohibition."

"On your own behalf, then, your grace, I am compelled to forbid any

further interest in my movements. My sphere in life utterly removes me

from your attention, and my path will probably never cross yours after

to-day."

"Miss Walsingham," cried the young duke, fervently, "I will not let you

away this time without hearing me. I want to tell you that I formed an

opinion concerning you when my eyes first picked you out at the marquis'

dinner-table, which each hurried interview since has only strengthened,

and I have wished to tell you ever since that evening what a profound

impression your graces of mind have made upon me. Whatever wrongs the

world may accuse you of, I have the utmost confidence in you. I know

that you will pursue none but a noble, unselfish course--that you are

the purest, ay, and the bravest woman whom I ever met."

Margaret was quite silenced by this outburst, and walked on almost

frightened by the novelty of her position.

It struck her that the man walking by her side and gazing so eagerly

into her face was the only stanch friend she had on earth.

For a brief moment she had a glimpse of the sweetness which gladdens the

life of a woman beloved, and then she woke to calmer reality, and put

the vision from her firmly.

"I am afraid that you think all this very premature," resumed his grace,

again taking up the tale, "and so I suppose it is, to you. But it is not

so to me. I could not have a deeper devotion and admiration for you

years hence than I have now. Dear Miss Walsingham, will you make me

immeasurably happy by bestowing your hand upon me?"

"I am compelled to reject your grace's proposal."

The pair walked mechanically on for some minutes, the young man whirling

his cane furiously, Margaret eyeing with tear-laden eyes the dusty

turnpike before her.

"I think you had better take a rest for a few minutes," said his grace,

when he had whirled the gold top of his cane and had nothing else to do;

"we have been walking quite fast, and are at least a mile and a quarter

from the village."

He spread his perfumed handkerchief on a flat stone, and Margaret,

obeying an impulse the very opposite of that which she intended, sank

down wearily upon it.

"I am not surprised that you have refused my offer so decidedly," said

the young duke, returning to the attack as he paced restlessly back and

forth in front of her "when I remember how utterly unknown my temper and

disposition are to you, and how recent our acquaintanceship still is. I

am ready to admit my own presumption in addressing you. But Miss

Walsingham dear Miss Walsingham, may I hope that when you know me

better, when you have studied me long enough, and have completely made

up your mind about all that is bad or good in me, you will then permit

me to address you as I have done to-night, and say yes or no, with more

justice to me."

"Why do you come to me with this request? Have you not been paying court

to the Marquis of Ducie's daughter all summer? I ask you this before I

can assure myself that your avowal is an honor to me. Your answer cannot

influence in the slightest my decision."

"I give you my word of honor, Miss Walsingham, that I have not been

paying court to Lady Juliana Ducie; if you wish to know why, I found

that her heartless desertion of St. Udo Brand, after he lost his

property, outweighed with me her fascination; and, having accidentally

become acquainted with the whole story, I naturally preferred to shun

the fawning lip and clasping hand, and the craven heart of a Judas in

woman's lovely seeming, that I might find her contrast in Margaret

Walsingham."

"Do not mention the dead," said Margaret, deeply moved. "I can never,

never forget that I was the unwilling cause of his early death."

She was weak and exhausted, though as yet she did not know it, and she

bowed her head to weep in an abandonment of grief, which came upon her

unawares and would not be set aside.

His grace stopped with folded arms to look at her. Here was the woman

who was enriched by the death of a man who had insulted her, mourning

his untimely end with bitter tears. A vision of the woman who had

plighted him her troth rose up to confront this grief-shaken figure with

decorous sighs, and shallow regrets, and heartless unconcern, and he put

away the red-lipped siren from his thoughts with an execration of scorn,

and clung anew to faithful Margaret.

"Should it be ten years hence that you relent, let me try my fate a

second time," he cried, grasping her hand in his increased fervor of

admiration.

"Leave me," murmured Margaret. "I have given you my answer--crown your

acts of kindness by leaving me."

The wind swept over the flat moors with a bleaker sound; she gathered

her mantle closer, and rose to face the east--sad-colored as her own

future.

"And where are you going?" asked the Duke of Piermont. "Surely you are

not going to hide yourself from all your friends? You will let me know

where you purpose residing until you procure the situation you are in

search of?"

I wonder what his grace would have said, had he known how utterly

destitute she was--that she had but one shilling at that moment in her

pocket--that the only friend to whom she could or would apply was her

Father in Heaven?

"I cannot answer your questions," said Margaret, holding out her hand to

him; "but since you are so generous with your interest, I shall let you

into the secret of my future movements, always with the understanding

that the Marquis of Ducie and his friends shall not know. Now, my lord,

I have nothing more to say to you, except to thank you for the intended

honor which it would be ridiculous in me to accept. See, there is a

shower coming up, and you will get wet before you can return to the

village. Good-by."

"But you--Good Heaven! Miss Walsingham, where are you to go?"

She waved her hand toward a farm-house, and walked swiftly away as if

she would seek shelter there.

And the last that he saw of her, was her black garments like a speck on

the murky road, seeming to walk in between two great thunderous clouds,

and to be swallowed up.

Margaret kept hurrying on, so absorbed in her musings that she passed

the farm-house, where she might have found a hospitable shelter for the

night, and hurried down the lonely road away from the river, where the

rising wind waited for her at sudden corners, and the black clouds

descended nearer with the darkening night.

And she hurried on faster, and her eyes pierced the gathering blackness,

with the sad and weary gaze of one whose heart carries a secret sorrow,

and tears fell slowly from them, which blurred the way, and blotted out

the lowering sky.

Where had she wandered to?

There was no friendly light from any cottage window to guide her, no

sheep-bell or halloo of herd-boy. Her clothes were heavy with moisture,

and she was very tired and very desolate.

How her head ached, and her arms!

Oh! if she could just be so blessed as to sink upon some kind woman's

bed this very moment, and sleep!

Perhaps she would fall in some lime-pit, or ditch, or into the slimy

lock of some canal, and die miserably.

Who would weep for her if she died? Who cared for Margaret Walsingham?

And the thought of her utter desolation overcome her, as weariness,

hunger, and storm had failed to do.

She crouched down beneath a furze-bush, and, resting her hot and beating

head upon her hands, wept, poor soul!

And then came unconsciousness and utter oblivion.

* * * * *

"I declare, John, she knows me! Here, take a sup o' this barley-water,

my lamb. Dear heart! she's sensible once more. Ain't there another drop

than this, John? Mayhap it's plenty." Margaret looked with languid eyes

upon the rugged figure of a man, clad in dingy red-dust habiliments, who

was standing between her and a small window, with his head sunk in a

curious way between his hands.

His brawny shoulders were heaving, and his rough shock of hair trembled

like sea-grass in a hurricane, while a gurgling sort of noise issued

from him.

Had a fit of laughter seized him, or was the man crying?

Whose bed was she lying in, hung with red calico curtains?

Where had she seen that figure in the clay-colored smock before?

And then Margaret saw a sallow-faced woman of spare figure bending over

her, with a tin cup in her hand, and a glistening channel down each

cheek.

"Mrs. Doane!" she breathed, in wonder.

"There I knowed it! Hark to that, John!" cried the woman, with an

exultant chuckle, which threatened to be strangled by a sob.

"Didn't she call me by name, the blessed lamb?"

She raised the blessed lamb in her arms, who, truth to say, scarcely

recognized herself by such an unwonted title, and held the tin cup to

her lips.

Sweeter to Margaret than Lusitanian nectar such as Chianti yields was

her drink of barley water.

Margaret without working out the queer problem of how she came there,

fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

And between sleeping profoundly, eating morsels of food with ravenous

enjoyment, lying placidly wakeful and watching without curiosity the

movements of her two nurses, Margaret saw the young moon grow into a

full, round orb, which glimmered in a halo through the bottle-green

glass of the cracked window, and silvered her from head to foot, each

long, still night; and at last strength came to her, and with it

recollection.

"Did I come to you, Mr. Doane?" she asked, one evening, when that person

was sitting by her bedside peacefully smoking his pipe, and listening

with pride to the voice of Johnnie in the kitchen chanting his spelling

lesson.

"Come to us? No, miss, you didn't but we come to you," replied the

bricklayer, stuffing down the ashes further into his pipe.

"I want to know about it, please; I do not understand at all how I am at

Lynthorpe."

"Where was you when you was took bad?"

Margaret pondered a long time.

"The last I distinctly remember is of being a mile and a half from

Rotherhithe."

"Lor-a-musy! and didn't nobody give ye a seat in their wagon down here?

Did you walk all the way, and so light of head like?" She put her thin

hand to her forehead again.

"I remember of being lost on a common outside of Rotherhithe," she

answered, "and I do not know what became of me after that. I sat down to

rest, and I suppose I must have been there all night. Is it long ago?"

"What date was it, dear miss, that you was lost on the moor? Can ye mind

that?"

"It was the seventh of October."

"Just think o' that now! It was two days after that when I found you

sitting at the foot of a hay-rick in Farmer Bracon's land, a mile from

here. You was a sorry sight, but I know'd yer again, and came close to

yer. You was neither sleeping nor not sleeping, but whispering to

yourself; so I brought you home to the wife, and she and me we've nursed

ye through, thank heaven! And here's the papers as was found on ye,

miss, by the wife," rising and producing them from a carefully-locked

little box in the cupboard; "and here's the purse with a shilling in it,

which was all that we saw with ye, and you a sending me a guinea reg'lar

every quarter for Johnnie's schooling, for a kind miss, as ye are."

Margaret lay quiet for a while; her deep gray eyes were full of tears,

her bleached face tremulous with smiles.

"Heaven is taking great care of me, and I have much to be thankful for.

Kind John Doane and his wife, for instance."

The bricklayer puffed hard, and slowly spelled out her meaning, and

arrived at it with a snort of surprised pleasure.

"Is it Betsy and me that you want to be thankful for? You as is our

guarding angel, what made a man of Johnnie as can read most as well as

the curate himself. And haven't every one of the nine of us, down to the

babby, felt as if we had a angel under the roof for the last three

weeks?"

"Have I been three weeks ill?"

"Three weeks, dear miss; seven days of 'em you wasn't in your head at

all, and Dr. Ramsey weren't easy about you--weren't easy at all. It were

inflammation of the brain."

"And you out of your pittance--you have nursed me through all this?"

"And proud to do it, miss."

"But if I had died, who would make up to you the doctor's bill, or your

own ease?"

"Dear miss, don't!" His hard hand went up to wipe the starting tears.

"If you had died, it's not us as would stop our mourning to think of the

mite you cost us. You ain't like the rest of the Peerage--you comes down

to we; you had a heart, so you had, and felt for we, and we never

forgets that."

"Kind John Doane, how shall I repay you?"

She buried her face and wept.

The cheerful crackle of a fagot fire came from the kitchen grate, long

spurts of yellow light outlined upon the wall Mrs. Doane's figure as she

danced the youngest toddler on her knee, and Margaret fell asleep to the

words:

"Dance to your daddy,

My bonny babby;

Dance to your daddy,

Do, dear, do-o!

You'll get a wee bit fishie,

In a wee bit dishie,

And a whirligigie,

And a buttered scone!"