Read Ebook: The End of Elfintown by Barlow Jane Housman Laurence Illustrator

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Ebook has 111 lines and 10808 words, and 3 pages

"Forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt you," he said when he could control his voice.

She spoke with the curiously thrilling emphasis she knew how to give her words sometimes, and Stephen could not help thinking she did credit to her training. She had been preparing for the stage in Canada, the country of the Lorenzis' adoption, before her father brought her to England, whither he came with a flourish of trumpets to contest Lord Northmorland's rights to the title.

Stephen had his gloves in his hand, and he tore a slit across the palm of one, without knowing it. But Margot saw. He was thinking of the heading in big black print at the top of the interview: "Romantic Climax to the Northmorland-Lorenzi Case. Only Brother of Lord Northmorland to Marry the Daughter of Dead Canadian Claimant. Wedding Bells Relieve Note of Tragedy."

"He did wire. Or rather the Duchess did, asking me to go at once to Cumberland, on important business. I found your telegram, forwarded from my flat, when I got to Northmorland Hall. If I'd known you were moving, I wouldn't have gone till to-day."

"You mean, dear, you wouldn't have let me move? Now, do you think there's any harm in a girl of my age being alone in a hotel? If you do, it's dreadfully old-fashioned of you. I'm twenty-four."

During the progress of the case, it had been mentioned in court that the claimant's daughter was twenty-nine ; but Margot ignored this unfortunate slip, and hoped that Stephen and others had forgotten.

Stephen bit his lip. "I see," he said slowly.

Yet what he saw most clearly was a very different picture. Margot as she had seemed the day he met her first, in the despised South Kensington lodgings, whither he had been implored to come in haste, if he wished to save a wretched, starving girl from following her father out of a cruel world. Of course, he had seen her in court, and had reluctantly encountered her photograph several times before he had given up looking at illustrated papers for fear of what he might find in them. But Margot's tragic beauty, as presented by photographers, or as seen from a distance, loyally seated at the claimant's side, was as nothing to the dark splendour of her despair when the claimant was in his new-made grave. It was the day after the burial that she had sent for Stephen; and her letter had arrived, as it happened, when he was thinking of the girl, wondering whether she had friends who would stand by her, or whether a member of his family might, without being guilty of bad taste, dare offer help.

Her tear-blotted letter had settled that doubt, and it had been so despairing, so suggestive of frenzy in its wording, that Stephen had impulsively rushed off to South Kensington at once, without stopping to think whether it would not be better to send a representative combining the gentleness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent, and armed for emergencies with a blank cheque.

Margot's hair, so charmingly dressed now, folding in soft dark waves on either side her face, almost hiding the pink-tipped ears, had been tumbled, that gloomy afternoon six weeks ago, with curls escaping here and there; and in the course of their talk a great coil had fallen down over her shoulders. It was the sort of thing that happens to the heroine of a melodrama, if she has plenty of hair; but Stephen did not think of that then. He thought of nothing except his sympathy for a beautiful girl brought, through no fault of her own, to the verge of starvation and despair, and of how he could best set about helping her.

She had not even money enough to buy mourning. Lorenzi had left debts which she could not pay. She had no friends. She did not know what was to become of her. She had not slept for many nights. She had made up her mind to die as her father had died, because it seemed the only thing to do, when suddenly the thought of Stephen had flashed into her mind, as if sent there by her guardian angel. She had heard that he was good and charitable to everybody, and once she had seen him looking at her kindly, in court, as if he were sorry for her, and could read something of what was in her heart. She had imagined it perhaps. But would he forgive her for writing to him? Would he help her, and save her life?

Any one who knew Stephen could have prophesied what his answer would be. He had hated it when she snatched his hand to kiss at the end of their interview; but he would scarcely have been a human young man if he had not felt a sudden tingle of the blood at the touch of such lips as Margot Lorenzi's. Never had she seemed so beautiful to him since that first day; but he had called again and again, against his brother's urgent advice ; and the story that the Duchess of Amidon was telling her friends, though founded entirely on her own imagination of the scene which had brought about Stephen's undoing, was not very far from the truth.

Now, he saw a picture of Margot as he had seen her in the lodgings she hated; and he wished to heaven that he might think of her as he had thought of her then.

"I've got something important to say to you," the girl went on, when she realized that Stephen intended to dismiss the subject of the hotel, as he had dismissed the subject of the interview. "That's the reason I wired. But I won't speak a word till you've told me what your brother and the Duchess of Amidon think about you and me."

"There's nothing to tell," Stephen answered almost sullenly. And indeed there was no news of his Cumberland visit which it would be pleasant or wise to retail.

Margot Lorenzi's complexion was not one of her greatest beauties. It was slightly sallow, so she made artistic use of a white cosmetic, which gave her skin the clearness of a camellia petal. But she had been putting on rather more than usual since her father's death, because it was suitable as well as becoming to be pale when one was in deep mourning. Consequently Margot could not turn perceptibly whiter, but she felt the blood go ebbing away from her face back upon her heart.

"Stephen! Don't they mean to receive me, when we're married?" she stammered.

"And her money! Oh, it's no use beating about the bush. I hate them both. Lord Northmorland has a fiendish, vindictive nature."

"So are you a Puritan, at heart," she broke in.

Stephen laughed. "No one ever accused me of Puritanism before."

"Maybe you've never shown any one else that side of you, as you show it to me. You're always being shocked at what I do and say."

For that, it was hardly necessary to be a Puritan. But Stephen shrugged his shoulders instead of answering.

"Let all that alone, won't you?" he said, in a well-controlled tone.

"I can't," Margot exclaimed. "I hate your brother. He killed my father."

"Because he defended the honour of our grandfather, and upheld his own rights, when Mr. Lorenzi came to England to dispute them?"

There were those--and Lord Northmorland and the Duchess of Amidon were among them--who did not admit that Lorenzi had believed in his "rights." And as for the money he had spent in trying to establish a legal claim to the Northmorland title and estates, it had not been his own, but lent him by people he had hypnotized with his plausible eloquence.

"It would be harder for a foreigner to get an English nobleman's title away than for a camel to go through the eye of the tiniest needle in the world. But never mind. All that's buried in his grave, and you're giving me everything father wanted me to have. I wish I could keep my horrid temper better in hand, and I'd never make you look so cross. But I inherited my emotional nature from Margherita Lorenzi, I suppose. What can you expect of a girl who had an Italian prima donna for a grandmother? And I oughtn't to quarrel with the fair Margherita for leaving me her temper, since she left me her face too, and I'm fairly well satisfied with that. Everybody says I'm the image of my grandmother. And you ought to know, after seeing her picture in dozens of illustrated papers, as well as in that pamphlet poor father published."

"If you want me to tell you that you are one of the handsomest women who ever lived, I'll do so at once," said Stephen.

Margot smiled. "You really mean it?"

"There couldn't be two opinions on that subject."

"Then, if you think I'm so beautiful, don't let your brother and his snobbish Duchess spoil my life."

"They can't spoil it."

"Too much, please, Margot."

"You must have patience. Everybody is rather tired of our names just now. Things may change some day. I'm ready to begin the experiment whenever you are."

"You are a dear," said Margot. And Stephen did not even shiver. "That brings me to what I had to tell you. It's this: after all, we can't be married quite as soon as we expected."

"Can't we?" he echoed the words blankly. Was this to be a reprieve? But he was not sure that he wanted a reprieve. He thought, the sooner the plunge was made, the better, maybe. Looking forward to it had become almost unbearable.

"Don't talk nonsense, my dear girl. Of course I'm not going to change my mind," said Stephen. "When do you want to sail?"

"There's not the slightest chance of their talking to me at all," Stephen answered sharply. "We've definitely quarrelled."

When he had dutifully seen Miss Lorenzi off at the ship, leaving her with as many flowers, novels, and sweets as even she could wish, Stephen expected to feel a sense of relief. But somehow, in a subtle way, he was more feverishly wretched than when Margot was near, and while planning to hurry on the marriage. He had been buoyed up with a rather youthful sense of defiance of the world, a hot desire to "get everything over." The flatness of the reaction which he felt on finding himself free, at least of Margot's society, was a surprise; and yet Stephen vaguely understood its real meaning. To be free, yet not free, was an aggravation. And besides, he did not know what to do or where to go, now that old friends and old haunts had lost much of their attraction.

Since the announcement of his engagement to Miss Lorenzi, and especially since the famous interview, cotioned silence thro' them.

"Not so," spake he in accents grave, "No more for us the deep woods wave, Tho' dear the home their greenery gave, Tho' long our hearts may rue them;

"Tho' fain were I, if this might be, Down yon cool shades all care to flee, And very fain would watch your glee Wax as in good days golden-- For, lo, the dream, whose power undid That ill witch-charm, a secret hid, Which hath, while fouler harm it rid, So fair a hope withholden.

"Mark well, ye Fays: In years long fled, When Earthland first felt Elfin tread-- But whence, or how, or why we sped, I wot our wisest knows not-- The Fate who did our journeyings guide Ne'er destined that, whate'er betide, This ball must aye our dwelling bide, A prison whose doors unclose not.

"That weird-night's vision warns me so-- Had meshed us soon in webs of woe, Whence Fate hath willed we free should go, Long since to me confiding The word whereby, if need befal, A?rial chariots I may call, Mage-fashioned, meet to waft us all Up ways heaven's vault dividing.

"Yet here so long, so blithe, we dwelled, So dear our haunts by flood and feld, That evermore I hoped and held Such word need ne'er be spoken, Now from me wrung by darkening doom, As menace-murk of thunder-gloom Bids shun hurled bolt and bellowing boom Ere yet the storm hath broken.

"No plainer speech my lips dare frame; But, soothly, had ye seen the same, Each idle moment would ye blame That us from flight doth sever, Not loitering o'er what rests to do Ere hence we float up yonder blue, Self-exiled from the paths we knew-- For ever and for ever."

I trow that every Fay who heard Was grieved at heart by Oberon's word, Yet none lamented, none demurred, Or against his will besought him; For in his steadfast-mournful eyne They could some fatal truth divine, Tho' none might know what boding sign To stern resolve had wrought him.

And 'tis a riddle still ungues't What vision from that mirror's breast Was flashed athwart King Oberon's rest, So filled with fear and wonder. Some say that unto him were shown Days when round earth, once green and lone, Shall whirl with cities all o'ergrown, No Elf-ring's circle asunder; And say he saw or ever he woke High heaven blurred out with riftless smoke, Where men ground down 'neath labour's yoke Toil to the mad wheel's thunder; World weeded o'er from prime to prime With want, and woe, and care, and crime, Unmeet to tell in Faery rime, That halts such burden under.

Howbeit, the Elves in eager crowd Made haste to raze those mansions proud; Anon the rill-cliffs echoed loud To crash of timbers falling, As toppling towers at onslaught rude Reeled down in wrack, and street-rows strewed Their swift-wrought ruin, whence captives shrewd Slipped homeward, warily crawling.

Till soon, if wanderer chanced to fare Across that earth-patch smooth and bare, He spied no Elfin doings there, And only heard a rustle Where shrivelled leaves their serest brown Thro' Autumn mists had drifted down. This was the end of Elfintown, Built with such coil and bustle.

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