THE STONE AND TREE.
MANY such excursions “the young Squire” made that day, in vain. It was in the evening, on the old weird ground, where, among the wild woods, stand the huge gray blocks of the Druid worship, that he saw his love at last.
“Euphan! I feared I was never to find you.”
She laughed; and was not there, under her clear brown tint, a beautiful crimson, for a minute flooding up, and then ebbing softly away?
“How did this wild bird come to me?” thought William, as he looked on her with a tender wonder.
And so he began to talk, approaching that with which his heart was fullest.
“I told you I had read,” he said, “of beautiful girls of your race, Euphan, who have married into ours, and they and their daughters have become great ladies; and they have continued to maintain friendship with their own people, and have done them, in their day, great services.”
“They were bad gipsies, though,” said Euphan, with a shake of her small head, and a smile. “There’s but the one way — the wild life or the tame. They could never come back, like a bird that has been tamed; her own will shun her.”
“But, oh! if she loved the man, could not she leave all, and be happy?” said William.
Again that beautiful tint dyed her cheeks. There was a silence, and her eyes were lowered to the fern, with which the tip of her slim shoe was fiddling.
“She might leave all, but she could not be happy, for she’d always know he’d a’ done wiser to have married one of his own. But ’tis nothing to me,” she said, with a slight fierce change, and her eyes glanced by his with a sudden flame; and then, with a cold contemptuous carelessness, she continued:— “I care for nothing — no one — not even myself. I’m a young lass — nineteen I count young — and I’m happy enough; let them settle their affairs that has such nonsense to manage, and when I hear the story ‘twill make Euphan laugh hearty. There’s many a man has been kind to me, and I’ll give him my hand, and wish him luck from my heart, and glad to say a good-natured word to him; but for love, I don’t know what it is, and for its sake I would not pluck that weed. That’s not Euphan — she’s not like that; there’ll never live the man she’d walk a mile to meet, or fret an hour if he was to go forever.”
She stood, pale, and smiling, with her fiery eyes on William, with a cruel pride.
The worst pain he had ever known was at William’s heart as he looked on the graceful cold girl. For a little time he was silent.
“I won’t leave you, Euphan, even for that,” he said, in the low tone of a deeply wounded man. And so beginning, little by little, he recounted the wild story of his love — and on, and on, into passionate pleading. “Don’t turn — don’t go; it costs you but a moment’s patience to hear me out, and when it’s over you’ll say you don’t like me, and never can like me, or let me hope for your love.”
“I could not say that, Willie,” she answered, with her hands locked together, and looking at him, as he stood by her shoulder, with such a pale mournful face as painter never dreamed. “Willie, where was the use of breaking Euphan’s heart? I wish I liked ye less — I might be happy then.”
“O God! — my darling!” he said, and his face was pale, in his rapture, as that of a man who had received his death wound.
“Willie — Willie — Willie,” she said, as gently as a child — each “Willie” sounding like a sob— “you don’t know; you shouldn’t a’ spoke kind to me — you should a’ let me go.”
“Oh, Euphan!” he cried, with a dreadful thought, “you like some one else — you like another better!”
“Never, never! — no, Willie, never. There’s none, and never was, but only you. But, for all that, the night ye found me in the storm, standing by the stone, ’twould a’ been well if you had passed me by — or better,” she said, with a sudden wild sob, “if ye had put your gun to my head and shot me.”
The anguish of an uncertainty dashed his rapture. Proud, pale, happy, yet with the same strange anguish, he held her hand clasped in both his, and looked with dilated gaze for his unknown fate in her beautiful face. For a time not a word was spoken — he wondering, in tumultuous silence, what grief lay at; the little heart that was so near him. At last he said, scarcely above a whisper: —
“Euphan! — Euphan, darling! say, I implore, what it is!”
“’Tis only — nothing; only Euphan’s heart is sore.”
“You don’t doubt me? Oh, Euphan you are not so cruel. You said I was true-hearted,” pleaded the young Squire.
“You could not think me false.”
“No; if I had a’ thought that, I would a never looked at you,” she said, with a cold fierce smile and tone of disdain, that seemed to chill him; and she went on, like herself: “No, no, Willie — never, no; nothin’ false in you — a gentleman, true and high — a one to live and die for. Oh, Willie! the world’s all wrong.” And with these words came a sudden gush of tears.
Hastily she laid her hands across her eyes, and turned, and walked hurriedly backwards and forwards within the circuit of the gray monumental blocks among which they stood. William followed; but with her hand, in her wayward mood, she impatiently pushed him back, and continued, with a passionate step, to walk to and fro.
She stopped, and looked up and down, and clasped her hands, and stamped.
“Oh! mad — mad! Did ye ever see a fool like Euphan? The sky, nor the grassy nor my own voice, nor nothing, is like itself — all’s gone changed. I know ye so short a time, Willie, and can I never forget ye? The quiet times long ago! — children’s very happy. Just a wee thing, four years old, stretching after flowers in the tarn. Oh! why didn’t they let me drown that time, and this poor heart wouldn’t a’ been bearin’ now!”
It seemed to Willie that this flood of feeling must be suffered to rush and eddy its own way into quiet; he had laid his arm against one of the huge old stones, and leaned, following her with the sad eyes and patient love that watch the tossings and ravings of sickness.
With a change of mood she came to his side, and laid her small Oriental hand on his shoulder, looking up into his face, with a sad childlike trust in her eyes. She said, very lowly and softly: —
“You’ve, handsome hair — soft, rich brown. Ah! yes, my handsome Willie, that fought for me.”
“My beautiful spirit! Here I found you,” said he, enthusiastically.
“What will your fortune be, Willie? — what? I won’t tell your fortune now. Well, am I to call ye ‘Willie’?”
Though her eyes were upon him, it was not as if she asked Willie, but something else.
William Haworth smiled, and laid his hand tenderly on her shoulder, with the adoration of all his manly heart.
“I’ll tell it to-morrow — shall I? — and Euphan’s too. And J must have a bit of your hair, mind — Willie’s hair. “‘Twill be a good fortune, and you’ll be a great man. Some kind grief first and then all good after; and Euphan’s will be a long one, and — a short.”
As she spoke thus softly, as it were, to herself, with her fingers over his shoulder, she was choosing a lock of the silken-brown hair, that grew, in long curls, at the back of his head. It was quietly, as if she had a right to it, and she never asked him.
He smiled fondly down at her, as he might on a beautiful wayward child.
And now up come her tiny scissors, tied to thin blue-silk ribbon; and she snips off the lock of brown hair gravely, and holds it before her sad eyes, and then winds a little bit of red thread fast round it, and places it in her bosom.
She looked up now, with her pretty laugh.
“Ain’t we queer cats, and never thinks o’ one thing — no, not half an hour? Come, now; and look ye, we are going to be merry, now; cryin’ comes in change and time; and time and change will dry our tears again, and I am going to make ye laugh with the dance we danced before. Ah, lad — if we had but a clever fiddler! I’ll go home alone, mind.”
She smiled over her shoulder as she turned away, and had reached the farthest stone of the ring, when she turned her head, stopping, and looking at him, said softly, to herself, “One other look;” and her look was all the sadder that her smile still lingered there, and then, with a little wave of her hand, away ran the pretty stranger, with a tread light and proud as a deer’s.