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leaves—a swishing against those that live—a footstep with tread solid and heavy—the footfall of a man!
A figure is seen approaching; as yet only indistinctly, but surely that of a man. As surely the man expected?
“He’s been detained—no doubt by some good cause,” she reflects, her spite and sadness departing as he draws near.
They are gone, before he can get to her side. But woman-like, she resolves to make a grace of forgiveness, and begins by upbraiding him.
“So you’re here at last. A wonder you condescended coming at all! There’s an old adage ‘Better late than never.’ Perhaps, you think it befits present time and company? And, perhaps, you may be mistaken. Indeed you are, so far as I’m concerned. I’ve been here long enough, and won’t be any longer. Good-night, sir! Good-night!”
Her speech is taunting in tone, and bitter in sense. She intends it to be both—only in seeming. But to still further impress a lesson on the lover who has slighted her, she draws closer the mantle, and makes as if moving away.
Mistaking her pretence for earnest, the man flings himself across her path—intercepting her. Despite the darkness she can see that his arms are in the air, and stretched towards her, as if appealingly. The attitude speaks apology, regret, contrition—everything to make her relent.
She relents; is ready to fling herself upon his breast, and there lie lovingly, forgivingly.
But again woman-like, not without a last word of reproach, to make more esteemed her concession, she says:—
“ ’Tis cruel thus to have tried me. Charles! Charles! why have you done it?”
As she utters the interrogatory a cloud comes over her countenance, quicker than ever shadow over sun. Its cause—the countenance of him standing vis-à-vis. A change in their relative positions has brought his face full under the moonlight. He is not the man she intended meeting!
Who he really is can be gathered from his rejoinder:—
“You are mistaken, Miss Armstrong. My name is not Charles, but Richard. I am Richard Darke.”
Chapter Twelve.
The wrong man.
Richard Darke instead of Charles Clancy!
Disappointment were far too weak a word to express the pang that shoots through the heart of Helen Armstrong, on discovering the mistake she has made. It is bitter vexation, commingled with a sense of shame. I or her speeches, in feigned reproach, have terribly compromised her.
She does not drop to the earth, nor show any sign of it. She is not a woman of the weak fainting sort. No cry comes from her lips—nothing to betray surprise, or even the most ordinary emotion.
As Darke stands before her with arms upraised, she simply says—
“Well, sir; if you are Richard Darke, what then? Your being so matters not to me; and certainly gives you no right thus to intrude upon me. I wish to be alone, and must beg of you to leave me so.”
The cool firm tone causes him to quail. He had hoped that the surprise of his unexpected appearance—coupled with his knowledge of her clandestine appointment—would do something to subdue, perhaps make her submissive.
On the contrary, the thought of the last but stings her to resentment, as he soon perceives.
His raised arms drop down, and he is about to step aside, leaving her free to pass. Though not before making an attempt to justify himself; instinct supplying a reason, with hope appended. He does so, saying—
“If I’ve intruded, Miss Armstrong, permit me to apologise for it. I assure you it’s been altogether an accident. Having heard you are about to leave the neighbourhood—indeed, that you start to-morrow morning—I was on the way to your father’s house to say farewell. I’m sorry my coming along here, and chancing to meet you, should lay me open to the charge of intrusion. I shall still more regret, if my presence has spoiled any plans, or interfered with an appointment. Some one else expected, I presume?”
For a time she is silent—abashed, while angered, by the impudent interrogatory.
Recovering herself, she rejoins—
“Even were it as you say, sir, by what authority do you question me? I’ve said I wish to be alone.”
“Oh, if that’s your wish, I must obey, and relieve you of my presence, apparently so disagreeable.”
Saying this he steps to one side. Then continues—
“As I’ve told you, I was on the way to your father’s house to take leave of the family. If you’re not going immediately home, perhaps I may be the bearer of a message for you?”
The irony is evident; but Helen Armstrong is not sensible of it. She does not even think of it. Her only thought is how to get disembarrassed of this man who has appeared at a moment so mal apropos. Charles Clancy—for he was the expected one—may have been detained by some cause unknown, a delay still possible of justification. She has a lingering thought he may yet come; and, so thinking, her eye turns towards the forest with a quick, subtle glance.
Notwithstanding its subtlety, and the obscurity surrounding them, Darke observes, comprehends it.
Without waiting for her rejoinder, he proceeds to say—
“From the mistake you’ve just made, Miss Armstrong, I presume you took me for some one bearing the baptismal name of Charles. In these parts I know only one person who carries that cognomen—one Charles Clancy. If it be he you are expecting, I think I can save you the necessity of stopping out in the night air any longer. If you’re staying for him you’ll be disappointed; he will certainly not come.”
“What mean you, Mr. Darke? Why do you say that?”
His words carry weighty significance, and throw the proud girl off her guard. She speaks confusedly, and without reflection.
His rejoinder, cunningly conceived, designed with the subtlety of the devil, still further affects her, and painfully.
He answers, with assumed nonchalance—
“Because I know it.”
“How?” comes the quick, unguarded interrogatory.
“Well; I chanced to meet Charley Clancy this morning, and he told me he was going off on a journey. He was just starting when I saw him. Some affair of the heart, I believe; a little love-scrape he’s got into with a pretty Creole girl, who lives t’other side of Natchez. By the way, he showed me a photograph of yourself, which he said you had sent him. A very excellent likeness, indeed. Excuse me for telling you, that he and I came near quarrelling about it. He had another photograph—that of his Creole chère amie—and would insist that she is more beautiful than you. I may own, Miss Armstrong, you’ve given me no great reason for standing forth as your champion. Still, I couldn’t stand that; and, after questioning Clancy’s taste, I plainly told him he was mistaken. I’m ready to repeat the same to him, or any one, who says you are not the most beautiful woman in the State of Mississippi.”
At the conclusion of his fulsome speech Helen Armstrong cares but little for the proffered championship, and not much for aught else.
Her heart is nigh to breaking. She has given her affections to Clancy—in that last letter written, lavished them. And they have been trifled with—scorned! She, daughter of the erst proudest planter in all Mississippi State, has been slighted for a Creole girl; possibly, one of the “poor white trash” living along the bayous’ edge. Full proof she has of his perfidy, or how should Darke know of it? More maddening still, the man so slighting