There was something very pathetic and pleading in his voice, and it went to Bessie"s heart, and when he took her face between his two hands and kissed her lips, she kissed him back again, and then withdrew from him just as Jack and Grey entered the room. They had been out for a little walk after dinner, and had returned, reporting the weather beastly, as Jack Trevellian expressed it.
"But it is jolly here," Grey said, rubbing his hands, and holding them to the bright fire. "Just the night for whist. What do you say?" he continued, turning to Bessie, who, having no objection to the game as she knew they would play it, a.s.sented readily, and the round table was brought out and the chairs arranged for the four.
Then arose the question:
"With whom should Bessie play?"
"Naturally with me, as I am the eldest and the last arrival," Jack said, while Grey rejoined, laughingly:
"I don"t know about that. I think we will draw cuts for her; the longest wins," and he proceeded to arrange three slips of paper in his hand.
"Be fair, now. I can"t trust you where a lady is concerned," Jack replied, while Neil maintained a dignified silence, and, when told to draw first, drew, and lost.
"Your turn next, Trevellian. Hurry up; faint heart never won fair lady.
Suppose you try that one," Grey said, indicating, with his finger, one of the two remaining slips.
"I shall not do it; there is some trick about it. You have fixed them. I shall take this," Jack said, and he did, and lost.
"I have won; the lady is mine," Grey cried, exultingly, as he held up the longest slip of paper.
Then, leading the blushing Bessie to her chair, he took his seat opposite her, and continued;
"Now I know you English are never happy unless you play for something, and as none of us, I hope, would play for money, suppose we try for that knot of plaid ribbon at Miss Bessie"s throat. I think it exceedingly pretty."
There was a gleam of triumph in the glance which Bessie flashed upon Neil, for she had not quite forgiven him his criticisms upon the ribbon, which both Grey and Jack seemed to admire, and which she consented to give to the victor.
"If your side beats you will draw cuts for the prize," Grey said to Jack; "and if my side beats there is no cut about it, it is mine."
And so the game began, Neil bending every energy to win, and feeling almost as much excited and eager as if it were a fortune at stake, instead of the bit of Scotch ribbon he had affected to dislike. And it did almost seem to him as if he were playing for Bessie herself; playing to keep her from Grey, the very man to whom he had said he would rather give her than to any one else in the world, if she were not for him. The first game was Grey"s, the second Neil"s; then came the rubber, and Bessie dealt.
"Oh, Bessie," Neil said, in a despairing voice, when he found that he did not hold a single trump, while Jack gave out the second time round, and Grey turned up five points, making six in all.
Suddenly the tide turned and Neil"s was the winning side until they stood six and four, and then Grey roused himself and played as he had never done before, carefully watching the cards as they fell, knowing exactly what had been played, and calculating pretty accurately where the others were, and finally coming off victorious.
"The ribbon is mine, and I claim my own!" Grey said, with a ring in his voice and a warmth in his manner which brought the hot blood to Bessie"s cheeks, as she took the knot from her throat and presented it to him, blushing still more when he raised it to his lips and then pinned it upon his sleeve.
"What a cad he is! I"d like to knock him down, if he were any one but Grey," Neil thought, and pushing back his chair from the table he said he had had enough of cards for one night. Whist was a stupid game anyway, and he never had any luck.
Neil was very quiet the remainder of the evening, though he could not altogether resist Grey, who was at his best, and kept them all in a roar of laughter at his jokes and the stories he told of the genuine Yankees whom he had seen in New England, and the Johnny Bulls he had encountered in England, and whose peculiarities of voice and expression he imitated perfectly. Then he recited poetry, comic and tragic and descriptive; and was so entertaining and brilliant, and so very courteous and gentlemanly in all he did and said, that Bessie was enraptured and showed it in her speaking face, which Neil knew always told the truth, and when at last he retired to his room he could not sleep, but lay awake, torn with jealousy and love and doubt as to what he ought to do.
The next morning both Grey and Jack departed by different trains, for the latter was going to the Scottish house where Lady Jane and Blanche were staying, and then to Trevellian Castle to see his cousin Hal, while Grey was going another way. And Neil said good-by without a pang, but Bessie was full of regret, especially for Grey, whom she should miss so much and to whom she said she hoped she should see him again.
"I am sure you will," he answered. "I am to leave Oxford next summer and join my Aunt Lucy, who is coming in June for a trip on the Continent.
But before I go home I shall come here again, and I shall always remember this Christmas as the pleasantest I ever spent, and shall keep the knot of ribbon as a souvenir of Stoneleigh and you. Good-by," and with a pressure of the hand he had held in his all the time he was talking, he was gone, and Bessie felt that something very bright and strong and helpful had suddenly been taken from her, and nothing left in its place but Neil, who, by contrast with the American, did not seem to her quite the same Neil as before.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CONTRACT.
For nearly a week longer, Neil remained at Stoneleigh, growing more and more undecided as to his future course, and more and more in love with Bessie, whose evident depression of spirits after the departure of Jack Trevellian and Grey Jerrold had driven him nearly wild. All the better part of Neil"s nature was in the ascendant now, and he was seriously debating the question whether it were not wiser to marry the woman he loved, and share his poverty with her, than to marry the woman he did not love, even though she had ten thousand a year. Yes, it was better, he decided at last, and one day when Archie had gone to Bangor and he was alone with Bessie, who sat by the window engaged in the very unpoetical occupation of darning her father"s socks, he spoke his mind.
The storm, which was raging at Christmas, had ceased, and the winter sunshine came in at the window where Bessie was sitting, lighting up her hair and face with a halo which made Neil think of the Madonnas which had looked at him from the walls of the galleries in Rome.
"There!" she said, as she finished one sock, and removing from it the porcelain ball, held it up to view. "That is done, and it looks almost as good as new."
Then she took another from the basket, and adjusting the ball inside, began the darning process again, while Neil looked steadily at her. Had Grey Jerrold been there, he would have thought her the very personification of what a little housewifely wife should be, and would have admired the skill with which she wove back and forth, over and under, filling up the hole with a deftness which even his Aunt Hannah could not have excelled. But Neil saw only her soft, girlish beauty, and cared nothing for her deftness and thrift. In fact he was really rebelling hotly against the whole thing--the socks, the yarn, the porcelain ball, and more than all, the darning-needle she handled so skillfully. What had the future Mrs. Neil McPherson to do with such coa.r.s.e things? he thought, as, forgetful of his mother"s anger, he began:
"I say, Bessie, I wish you would stop that infernal weaving back and forth with that darning-needle, which looks so like an implement of warfare and makes me shudder every time you jab it into the wool. I want to talk to you."
"Talk on; I can listen and work too. I have neglected father"s socks of late and have ever so many pairs to mend," Bessie said, pointing to the piled-up basket, without looking at the flushed, eager face bending close to her.
But when Neil took her hands in his, and removing from them the sock and darning-needle, said to her, "Bessie, I did not mean to tell you, at least not yet, but I cannot keep it any longer. I love you and want you for my wife," she looked up an instant, and then her eyes fell before the pa.s.sionate face, and she cried:
"Oh, Neil! You are not in earnest! You do not mean what you say. You cannot want _me_. I am so very poor. I must take care of my father, and then--there is--there is--oh, Neil, I am sorry if it is wrong to say it--there is my mother!"
She put the whole hard facts before him at once, her poverty, her father, for whom she must always care, and her mother, the greatest obstacle of all.
"I know all that. Don"t you suppose I thought it out before I spoke?"
Neil said, drawing her closer to him as he continued: "I am going to tell you the whole truth about myself, and show you my very worst. I am a great, lazy, selfish fellow, and have never in my life done any one any good. I have lived for myself and my pleasure alone. I am not one quarter as good as Grey Jerrold, or even Jack Trevellian."
At the mention of Grey, Bessie gave a little start, for a thought of him seemed to cast a shadow over the sky, which for a moment had been very bright, if Neil really and truly loved her. But the shadow pa.s.sed as Neil went on, rapidly:
"I never had any home training; that is, never met any opposition to my wishes. Everything bent to me until I came to believe myself supreme; but, Bessie, I know that there is in me the material for a man, something like Grey Jerrold. I speak of him because he represents to me the n.o.blest man I ever knew, and I always feel my inferiority when I am with him, and show at my worst by contrast. You know what I mean. You felt his power when he was here; the tone of his voice; the way he put things; the indescribable something which makes him so popular everywhere, I don"t know what it is. I would give the world if I possessed it. I have watched him many a time at Eton and at Oxford and elsewhere, when he was surrounded by a lot of London swells, young lords and sons of earls, who would cut me dead, but who took to the American at once and made him more than their equal. Once I asked him how he did it and if it were not an awful bore always to consider others before himself. I shall never forget the expression of his face as he hesitated a moment and seemed to be looking far off at something in the past.
Then he said: "Sometimes it is hard; but long ago, when I was a boy, I made a vow to live for others rather than myself, to try to make somebody happy every day with a kind word or act or look, and only think, if I live to a good old age, how many people"s lives will have been a little sunnier because of me. Suppose I commenced this plan at fourteen and that I live to be seventy, which is not very old, it will make over twenty thousand, and that surely ought to atone for a great deal--don"t you think so?--and in a way my life is a kind of atonement."
That is what he said, or the substance of it, and I have often thought of it and wondered what he meant by an atonement."
In his enthusiasm over Grey, Neil forgot for a moment what he had been saying to Bessie, who had listened intently, and who exclaimed:
"Twenty thousand people happier because of him. Oh, Neil, that is worth more than the crown of England I wish you--I wish we could be like him."
"You _are_ like him," Neil said, coming back to his original subject.
"You make me think of him so much in your sweet forgetfulness of yourself and your thoughtfulness of others, and, Bessie, I am going to try to be like him, too, if you will help me, if you will be my wife, by and by, when I have made a man of myself, and am more worthy of you.
Will you, Bessie, will you promise to be my little wife when I come to claim you?"
He had her face between his hands and was looking into her eyes where the tears were shining, as she said to him:
"Neil, you do not know what you ask, or all it involves. I cannot leave my father, and there is Blanche. You are as good as engaged to her; you said so in your letter."
"I know I wrote you so," Neil said, "because I wanted to fortify myself against doing just what I have done, but I shall never marry Blanche Trevellian; if you tell me no, I shall remain single forever; but you will not, Bessie. You will not destroy my last chance to be a man. You do love me, I am sure, and you will love me more when you know all I mean to do. I shall not separate you from your father. He shall live with us, and Anthony and Dorothy too; though not here at Stoneleigh, except it be in the summer when the roses are in bloom. Father has a small house in London, in Warwick Crescent; he will let us live there, and--and--"
Here Neil stopped, for he remembered his mother"s threat of disinheritance if he should marry Bessie, and he knew she was capable of performing it and if she did how was he to live even in that small house in Warwick Crescent? But Bessie"s eyes were upon him; Bessie"s upturned face was between his hands, and poverty with her did not seem so very terrible. They could manage some way, but he would be frank with her, and, he continued, at last, "Bessie, I shall not deceive you, or pretend that mother will receive you at first, for she will not. She means me to marry Blanche, and will be very angry for a time, and perhaps refuse to give me my present allowance, so we may be very poor; but that I shall not mind if you are with me. Poverty will be sweet if shared with you, who, I know, are not afraid of it."
"No, Neil," Bessie said, getting her face free from his hands, "I am not afraid of poverty, and I do love you; but--"