CHAPTER IX.
KENELM EYRLE’S LOVE.
Sir Ronald sang those words to himself as he rode back home, the face of Lady Hermione before him all the way, her voice in his ears, the glad sunshine, the whispering leaves, the fragrant flowers, all seemed part of her.
“The poet’s ideal woman, she is, indeed,” he said to himself; “she has brought every charming quality of her childhood into her beautiful womanhood. She is arch, dainty, piquant, tender, earnest; there are grand qualities in her. Sure as her eyes are stars and her lips roses, so sure has she a magnificent and noble nature but half developed yet.”
The very glamor and madness of love was on him. It seemed to him that every leaf on the trees muttered her sweet name as he passed.
“Hermione,” he repeated it. “Perhaps her beautiful, varied, lovely nature is owing to her name, of all Shakespeare’s heroines to my mind fairest and best.”
He hardly remembered the existence of Clarice Severn; she was but Hermione’s friend. He did not even remember her delight at seeing him again. The proud, passionate beauty of her face had not moved him.
“Strange that I should have loved Hermione best even as a child. I wish she were a child now, that I could hold her in my arms and kiss her and call her my own wife.”
It was love, not exactly at first sight, for he had cared for her even when she was a child, but in the engrossing pursuits of traveling, in the excitement caused by his uncle’s illness and death, the image of the charming child had, in some measure, faded from his mind. When he saw her again the old love revived, and took fresh shape. It was no longer as a child, but as a woman, that he worshiped her.
When Sir Ronald reached home he found an old friend there awaiting him, Kenelm Eyrle, of The Towers, with whom he had been both at Eton and Oxford.
They had been almost like brothers together, coming from the same neighborhood and knowing the same people, having the same friends, and, in a great measure, the same tastes. One might have traveled far on a summer’s day and not have found a fairer-looking, more thoroughly admirable man than Kenelm Eyrle. He was three years older than his friend, and had traveled much. He united in himself the polish of a foreigner with the candor of an Englishman.
I do not know that he was so popular as Sir Ronald, for Kenelm had a kind of half-haughty grace with him that produced great effect. People at first sight considered him proud and haughty; they were apt to take away with them a somewhat disagreeable and untruthful impression of him; but if in the hour of distress you needed a friend, if in adversity you needed help, if in trouble you wanted succor, then the value of Kenelm Eyrle’s sterling character came to light. He was always, as an old soldier expressed it, to the front. Others might fail; he never did.
And now the two friends, who had parted youths, met as men, with a hearty clasp of the hand, an Englishman’s only way of expressing delight and emotion.
“I only returned from Egypt last week,” said Kenelm. “A sudden fancy to see the pyramids took possession of me, and I went.”
Sir Ronald laughed.
“I hope such a fancy will never take possession of me,” he said. “I shall not leave England again. I find no place like it.”
“The dark-eyed daughters of sunny Spain do not charm you, then, Ronald?”
His face flushed slightly.
“No,” he replied; “I like the women of our own land best.”
“You have seen Miss Severn. What do you think of her?”
“She is very beautiful—wonderfully improved,” replied Sir Ronald; and the great pity was that they did not there and then trust each other. Sir Ronald took the idea that Kenelm was in love with Lady Hermione; Kenelm believed his friend to be in love with Miss Severn.
One word more, and our story can resume its course. There was yet another link in the chain.
Clarice Severn had always preferred Sir Ronald to every one else in the wide world. In her girlhood she had mistaken his kindness for love. Now that she was a woman she vowed to herself that that love should by some means or other be hers. She was no tragedy queen, no woman capable of poisoning or stabbing or drowning a rival, should one appear; but in a world-scheming kind of way she was ready to do anything that would secure his love for herself.
On the morning that she met him at Lord Lorriston’s, Clarice admired him as much as he, in his turn, admired Lady Hermione. She saw that Sir Ronald was inclined to admire the earl’s daughter, and she laid many little plans in her own mind to keep them apart.
“I am more beautiful than Hermione,” she thought to herself, in all probability; “richer, quite as well born. Why should he prefer her to me?”
And why? How many thousands of girls have asked themselves that question? Why, when Clarice loved him, should his whole heart, soul, mind and fancy be concentrated upon another?
Clarice Severn had many admirers, but the man who loved her with a life’s love was Kenelm Eyrle. He had made her an offer of marriage and she refused him; he had told her that living or dead he should be true to her and care for her alone. She had never flirted or coquetted with him; she was fond of him from old associations, because for years he had been kind to her, but she had never deceived him in the least.
Now that Sir Ronald was coming home, she has begun to wonder how she should best avoid Kenelm.
“I remember Ronald’s chivalrous sense of honor,” she said to herself. “No matter how much he might care for me, if he thought Kenelm loved me he would shun and avoid me.”
She did her best to bring Kenelm and Lady Hermione into each other’s society. She arranged picnics, drives, walks; she exaggerated and repeated every little complimentary speech they ever made about each other, but it was all in vain. Kenelm Eyrle used to laugh in her face.
“Oh, Clarice, you think I shall learn to care for Hermione,” he would say. “As well try to make the needle false to the pole. I care for one face only, and that is yours; for one love only, and that is you.”
Nor was she more successful with Lady Hermione, who laughingly refused to believe that Kenelm cared for her at all, and pulled marguerites apart, leaf by leaf, the last one always ending, “He loves me not.”
“There was a man once who sold his shadow,” said Mr. Eyrle to her one day. “That was a much easier feat, Clarice, than for you to send me from you. You cannot, darling! Do not look at me and tell me you may die. If you did I should always live where I could see your grave, and I should love the grass upon it better than the fairest color that ever bloomed on another face. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she replied, half sadly; “I do believe you, Kenelm. I—I wish it were not so.”
And the beautiful girl had looked at him half regretfully.
“I almost wish I did; but you have explained the reason yourself. If for every one there is what the Germans call an alter ego, another soul—ah, Kenelm, I do not wish to hurt you—but you are not that to me. It is not my fault.”
He looked long and earnestly at her.
“No,” he said; “God help me. It is not your fault, Clarice; but I shall hope on until you tell me that you love some one else.”