Chapter X

Elk Ridge, the place selected by Mrs. Singleton for her gypsy tea, was a very picturesque and beautiful locality, distant seven miles from Scarborough. The drive there, through the soft, golden beauty of the August afternoon, was delightful; and the beauties of the height when reached well repaid any exertion that might have been necessary to gain it. Since none was necessary, however, it proved a great surprise to those who had not been there before to find themselves on a noble eminence, crowned by splendid masses of rock, and commanding a most extensive view of the smiling country around and the blue mountains in the distance. It was an ideal spot for _al fresco_ amusements, and the party assembled were in the mood to enjoy it.

Very soon a kettle was hung from crossed sticks over a blazing fire; and while the water was boiling, and the arrangements for tea in progress, all those who were not actively engaged in these arrangements scattered over the summit, admiring the view, and now and then climbing some of the more accessible of the great granite boulders. Among the last were Helen and Frank Morley, both in high spirits, and laughing like a pair of merry children. Marion shrugged her shoulders over their exploits.

"I have never been young enough for that," she said to Rathborne. "I could never, at any stage of existence, see the 'fun' of risking one's neck."

"It is childish!" he responded, with ill-concealed contempt. He had endeavored to dissuade Helen, but for once she had been deaf to his remonstrances. Her spirits were so high this afternoon that an outlet for them was indispensable; and she was still so much of a child that this special outlet of physical exertion and daring was very agreeable to her.

"I suppose it is a good thing to be childish now and then," said Marion. "I don't think _I_ ever was; and, no doubt, it is so much the worse for me."

"On the contrary, I think, so much the better," replied Rathborne. "Where there is childishness there must be folly, and I cannot imagine you guilty of that."

"Can you not?" She paused an instant and seemed to reflect. "But there are things worse than folly," she said, with one of her sudden impulses of candor; "and I might be guilty of some of them."

"Oh! you might--yes." He laughed. "So might I. Perhaps for that reason I have more sympathy with them than with folly."

Marion gave him a glance which he did not understand nor yet altogether fancy. "Yes," she said, "I am very sure you have more sympathy with what is bad than with what is foolish."

Before he could reply to such an equivocal speech, Mrs. Singleton sent a messenger for Miss Lynde to come and help her pour out tea; and the young lady rose and walked away.

It was very gay and bright and pleasant, that gypsy tea among the rocks, with depths of verdure overhead and far-stretching beauty of outspread country below. The amber sunshine streamed over the scene; pretty pale-blue smoke, from the fire over which the kettle hung, mounted in the air; there was a musical chatter of tongues and sound of laughter. At such times and in such scenes it is difficult for the most thoughtful to realize the great sadness of the world, the care that encompasses life, and the pain that overshadows it. But these light hearts were never at any time troubled with the realization of such things. They were all young and, for the most part, prosperous; life went easily with them, and nothing seemed more remote than trouble or unhappiness. The hours sped lightly by, as such hours do, and presently it was time to think of returning. The sun sank into his golden bed, the moon would soon rise majestically in the east, and the drive back to Scarborough would be as delightful as the drive out had been.

But just before the move for departure was made Rathborne came to Marion and said: "You have not yet seen the finest view--that from the other side of the Ridge. Would you not like to walk over there and look at it?"

"I think not," replied Marion, who did not care for a _tête-à-tête_ with him. "I am not very fond of views."

"O but, Marion, this view is really fine!" cried Helen, eagerly. "Pray go; you will be repaid for the exertion."

Not caring to make her refusal more marked, Marion rose with an inward sense of vexation. "Very well, then," she said to Rathborne; "since Helen is sure I will be repaid for the exertion, I will go; but, since _I_ am not sure, I hope the exertion required is not very much."

"It is only that of walking about a hundred yards," he answered. And as they turned and followed a well-defined path, which led among the rocks and trees, he added, "I do not mean, however, to insist upon any exertion which would be disagreeable to you."

Marion might truthfully have answered that it was not the exertion which was disagreeable to her; but she had no desire to make an enemy of this man, and instinct told her that whoever wounded his vanity was thenceforth to him an enemy. So she replied lightly that she was very indolent, especially where the beauties of nature were concerned; but that she had no doubt the view would repay her after she reached it.

"I think it will," said Rathborne; "otherwise I should not have proposed your coming."

And indeed even Marion, who was right in saying that the beauties of nature did not greatly appeal to her, was moved by the loveliness and extent of the view suddenly spread before her, when they came to the verge of the Ridge, on the other side, where the hill broke off in a sheer precipice. The great rock-face of this precipice shelved downward to a soft, pastoral valley, beyond which were belts of encircling woodlands, green hills rising into bolder heights as they receded, and a distant range of azure mountains fair as hills of paradise.

"Oh! this _is_ glorious!" cried Marion, involuntarily, as the broad scene, with the long, golden lights and beautiful shadows of late evening falling across it, was suddenly revealed by an abrupt turn in the path. She walked to the edge of the precipice and stood there, with hands lightly clasped, looking into the far, magical distance. At this moment, as in other moments like it, something stirred in her nature deeper and nobler than its ordinary impulses. She had a consciousness of possibilities which at other times were remote from her realization,--possibilities of loftier action and feeling, of a higher standard, of a loftier aim than her life had known. It was a state of feeling not unlike that which came to her in the Catholic church, and she shrank from it. By this grand arch of bending, lucid sky, by those distant heavenly heights with their mystical suggestions, thoughts were roused in her which seemed in little accord with the other thoughts of her life. She forgot for a moment the man who stood beside her, and started when he spoke.

"It repays you--I see that," he said. "And so I am repaid for bringing you."

"Yes, it is very beautiful," she answered, slowly; "but I am not sure that I am obliged to you for bringing me here. It produces in me feelings that I do not like."

"What kind of feelings?" inquired Rathborne, curiously.

She swept him with a quick glance from under her half-drooped eyelids, and he had again the impression that it conveyed something of contempt.

"If I could define them," she said, "I doubt if you would be able to understand them. I am certain that you have never felt anything of the kind."

"Why should you be certain of that?" he asked, a little irritated as well by her tone as by her glance. "You do not surely think that you have gauged all my possibilities of feeling."

"I have made no attempt to do so," she said, indifferently. "Why should I? But one receives some impressions instinctively."

"And you think, perhaps, that I have no feeling," he replied quickly; "that I am cold and hard and selfish, and altogether a calculating machine. But you are mistaken. I was all that once--I frankly confess it,--but since I have known you, I have changed. I have learned what it is to feel in the deepest manner."

There was a short silence. Marion's heart gave a great bound and then seemed to stand still. A fear which she had striven to put away was now a horrible certainty. She had played with fire, and the moment of scorching was come--come to desecrate a place which she had felt to be a sanctuary filled with the consciousness of God. Her first impulse was to turn and go away without a word; her next, to utter words as scornful as her mood.

"If I am mistaken, so are you, Mr. Rathborne," she said,--"exceedingly mistaken in imagining that I have given any thought to your feelings, or that I am in the faintest degree interested in them."

Her tone stung him like the stroke of a whip, and roused a passion on which she had not calculated. He took a few hasty steps toward her; and she found herself prisoned between the precipice on one side, and this man, who stood and looked at her with eyes that gleamed under his frowning brow.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, peremptorily, "that you have no interest in feelings which you have deliberately excited and encouraged? Do you mean to say that you have meant nothing when by every art in your power you have led me on to love you?"

Surely retribution was very heavy upon Marion at that moment. The injustice of the charge--for of any such intention her conscience acquitted her--only added to her sense of angry humiliation, and to the consciousness, which she could not ignore, that she had, in some degree at least, brought this upon herself. Her indignation was so deep, her anger so great, that for once her readiness of speech failed, and she could only reply:

"How dare you address me in this manner?"

He laughed--a short, bitter laugh, not pleasant to hear. "You are a good actor, Miss Lynde," he said. "I never doubted your capacity in that line; but I see that it is even greater than I imagined. How dare I address you with the truth! Why should I not? You have made me believe that you desired nothing more than to hear it. Your manner to me, since the first evening we met, has admitted of but one interpretation--that you wished to excite the feeling I have not hesitated to show you. And so long as I merely _showed_ it, you were pleased; but now that I utter it, you profess an indignation which it is impossible you can feel."

"You are speaking falsely!" cried Marion, whose anger was now so excessive that no words seemed strong enough to express it. "I have never for one instant wished to encourage the feeling of which you speak. I knew you were engaged to Helen, and I thought you something, at least, of a gentleman. I now see that you have no claim whatever to that title. Let me pass!"

"No," he said--and now he extended his hand and caught her wrist in a vise-like grasp. "I have no doubt, from the proficiency you exhibit, that you have played this game before with success; but you shall not have the pleasure of playing it successfully with me. In one way or another, I will make it a costly game to you, unless you tell me that all this affected indignation means nothing, and that if I end my entanglement with Helen, you will marry me."

"Let me go!" said Marion, pale and breathless with passion. "If you were free as air--if you had never been engaged to Helen--I would not think of marrying you! Is that enough?"

"Quite enough," he answered--but still he did not release her wrist. "Now listen to me. I am not a man with whom any woman--not even one so clever as you are--can amuse herself with impunity. I do not mean to be melodramatic; I shall not curse you for your deception, for the heartlessness with which you have sacrificed me to your vanity; but I warn you that you have made an enemy who will leave nothing undone to pay his debt. I read you very thoroughly, beautiful and unscrupulous schemer that you are; and I promise you that in the hour when you think your schemes are nearest success, you will find them defeated by me. To that I pledge myself."

There is something terrible in feeling one's self the object of hatred, even if that hatred be both undeserved and impotent; and, brave as Marion was, proud and defiant as she was, she felt herself shiver under these words, and under the gaze which seconded them. What, indeed, if she had made a mistake on the very threshold of the life in which she had expected to manage so well. What if, instead of making a satisfactory test of her power, she had roused an enmity which even her experience knew to be more powerful and more tireless than love? She did not quail under the fiery gaze bent on her, but her heart sank with a sense of apprehension, of which she was strong enough to give no outward sign.

"It is a very worthy object to which you pledge yourself," she observed, with scorn. "But I am not afraid of a man who is cowardly enough to threaten a woman with his enmity because she rejects and despises what he calls his love."

Her voice had always a peculiar quality of clearness in speaking, but when she was at all excited it was like silver in its resonance. Therefore the words distinctly reached the ears of one who was coming toward them, and the next instant Helen's pale face and startled eyes rose before her.

She uttered a sharp exclamation, which stopped the words that were rising to Rathborne's lips; and, wrenching her arm from his grasp, she sprang forward to her cousin's side. "Helen!" she cried, unconscious almost of what she said, "what are you doing here?"

It is not always the people who seem most weak whom emergency proves to be so. At this moment Helen exhibited a self-control which would have surprised even those who knew her best. She was pale as marble, and her violet eyes had still their startled, piteous look; but she answered, quietly:--

"I came to look for you. It was foolish--I will go back now. Don't trouble to come with me."

But as she turned, Marion seized her arm. "Helen!" she exclaimed, "don't misjudge me! Don't think that this is my fault!"

"No," replied Helen, with the same strange quietness; "I heard what you said. I don't blame--any one. I suppose it was natural."

Then it was Rathborne's turn. "Helen," he said, coming up to her, and speaking with an attempt at the old tone of authority; "you must listen to _me_."

But she turned away from him with something like a shudder. "No," she said, "do not ask me--not now. I may be weak, but not so weak as not to understand--this. Don't come with me. Frank will look after me and take me home. That is all I want."

She moved away through the beautiful greenery, a slender, lovely figure, with drooping head; and the two whom she left behind watched her with one sensation at least in common--that of a keen sense of guilt, which for the moment no other feeling was strong enough to stifle.