A Dozen Ways Of Love by Lily Dougall (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

young mistress of the house. The other replied that mademoiselle approved of his plan. It was evident that poor Madge was no longer the mistress; the clerk was an emissary of Mrs. King's, and as such he had taken the control. Still, as he was an amiable and capable person, Courthope fell in with his suggestion, inwardly vowing that soon of some domain, if not of this one, Madge should again be queen.

Courthope received a message to the effect that the young ladies wished to see him. There was something in the formal wording of this message, coming after his solitary meal, which made him know that they were ill at ease, that they had taken their mistake more deeply to heart than he would have wished. He had no sooner entered the room where Madge stood than he wished he were well out of it again, so far did his sympathy with her discomfort transcend his own pleasure at being in her presence.

Madge stood, as upon the first night, behind her sister's chair. Eliz looked frightened and excited, yet as half enjoying the novel excitement. Madge, pale-faced and distressed, showed only too plainly that she had need of all the courage she possessed to lift her eyes to his. Yet she was not going to shirk her duty; she was going to make her apology, and the apology of the household, just as the judge, her father, would have wished to have it made.

It was a little speech, conned beforehand, which she spoke--a quaint mixture of her own girlish wording and the formal phrases which she felt the occasion demanded. Courthope never knew precisely what she said. His feelings were up and in tumult, like the winds on a gusty day, and he was embarrassed for her embarrassment, while he smiled for the very joy of it all.

Madge confessed with grief that Eliz had mistaken Xavier for Courthope. She said the man from the village had shown them what folly it was to suppose that the gentleman could be Xavier's accomplice. She begged that same gentleman's pardon very humbly. At the end he heard some words faltered: she wished it was in their power 'to make any amends.'

Almost before she ceased speaking he took up the word, and his own voice sounded to him merry and bold in comparison with her soft distressful speech; but he could not help that, he must speak with such powers as nature gave him.

'There are two ways by which you can make amends, and first I would beg that none of our friends who were here last night should be told of it. I should not like to think that Emma and Elizabeth, and Evelina or Marianna Alcoforado should ever hear that I was taken for a thief.'

'You are laughing at us,' said Eliz sharply. 'We know that you will go away and make fun of us to all your friends.'

'If I do you will have one way of punishing me that would give me more pain than I could well endure, you can shut me out next time I come to ask for shelter.'

'Oh, but you can't come again,' said Eliz, with vibrating note of fierce discontent; 'our stepmother will be here.'

He looked at Madge.

'I was going to say that the other way in which you could make amends would be to give me leave to come back; and if _you_ give me leave I will come, even if it be necessary, to that end, to get an introduction from all the clergy in Great Britain, or from the Royal Family.'

A ray of hope shot into Madge's dark eyes, the first glimmer of a smile began to show through her distress.

'It is an old adage that "where there is a will there is a way," and did I not walk on your most impossible snow-shoes and bring back your silver?'

Madge looked down, a pretty red began to mantle her pale face, and, as if the angels who manage the winds and clouds did not wish that the blush of so dear a maiden should betray too much, a ray of scarlet light from the sinking sun just then came winging through the dispersing storm-clouds and caused all the white snow-world to redden, and dyed the frost-flowers on the window-pane, and, entering where the pane was bare, lit all the room with soft vermilion light. So, in the wondrous blush of the white world, the girl's cheeks glowed and yet did not confess too much.

'You will allow me to send in your compliments and inquire after Mr. Woodhouse as I pass?' This was Courthope's farewell to Eliz, and she called joyfully in reply:--

'You need not send back his message, for we shall know that they are "all very indifferent."'

Into the scarlet shining of the western sun, an omen of fair weather and delight, Courthope set forth again from the square tin-roofed house, 'leaving,' as the saying is, 'his heart behind him.' The large farm-horses, restive from long confinement and stimulated by the frost, shook their bells with energy. The Morin women displayed such goodwill and even tenderness in their attentions to the comfort of the second prisoner, in whom they had found an old friend, that, tied in a blanket and lying full length on the straw of a box-sleigh, he looked content with himself and the world, albeit he had not as yet returned from the happy roving-places of the drunken brain. The talkative clerk was glad enough to give Courthope the reins of the masterful horses; he sat on one edge of the blue-painted box and Courthope on the other; thus they started, bravely plunging into the drifts between the poplars. The drifts were all tinged with pink; the poplars, intercepting the red light upon their slender upright boughs, cast, each of them, a clear shadow that seemed to lie in endless length athwart the glowing sward.

Courthope looked back at the house which had been so dim and phantom-like the night before; the red sun lit the icicles that hung from eaves and lintels, tinged the drifts, glowed upon the windows as if with light from within, and turned the steep tin roof into a gigantic rose; but all his glance was centred upon his lady-love, who stood, regardless of the cold, at the entrance of the drift-encircled porch and watched them as long as the sunlight lay upon the land. Was she looking at the plunging sleigh and at its driver, or at the chasms of light in the rent cloud beyond? His heart told him, as he drove on into the very midst of the sunset which had embraced the glistening land, that the maid, although not regardless of the outer glory, only rejoiced in its beauty because the vision of her heart was focused upon him. His heart, in telling him this, taught him no pride, for had he not learned in the same small space of time only to count himself rich in what she gave?

Slow was the progress of the great horses; they passed the grove of high elms and birches that, dressed in the snowflakes that had lodged in boughs and branches when the wind dropped, stood up clear against the gulfs of blue that now opened above and beyond. Then the house was hidden, and after that, by degrees, the light of the sunset passed away.


THE END.
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Publication Date: 06-08-2010

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