Chapter XXII: When Love Dawns

“I leant my back against an oak;
I thought it was a trusty tree.”

“By George!” said Dick Lovell to himself, “I can’t go to see her. I haven’t the nerve.”

He stood in the sunny street at a time when a conscientious photographer’s assistant should have been hard at work, and was annoyed at his own discomfiture. Because a girl was a milliner was no reason a man could present himself at her house without being asked; yet half an hour ago he had been fool enough to take French leave from photography for just that purpose.

“Glad I stopped myself before I hung around her door like a cad!” he thought. He looked up from the curbstone he was considering and saw Dark Magdalen herself, almost at his elbow. She was walking west with slow steps and eyes as somber as her black gown.

At the sound of his quick greeting she stopped and saw him standing with his hat off, a white carnation in his blue serge coat, his brown, lean face bent down to her with a laugh of pleasure in eyes and mouth.

“How do you do?” she said a little breathlessly as she shook hands with him and wondered why Dolly’s male friends could not take off and put on their hats with this man’s manner.

He was looking at her through lowered lashes with that trick he had; there was a kind of sweet keenness in his gray eyes.

“Very well, now,” he returned; “a minute ago I wasn’t so sure. To tell the truth, I was wishing I dared go and call on you--and I didn’t dare.” The words were boyish, the sense of them graver.

“Call?” said Magdalen stupidly. “On me?” She began to laugh. “No one ever comes to see me,” she observed frankly. “I couldn’t have let you in.”

She thanked Heaven he had not dared, for Dolly would have worried her life out with silly cautions, let alone jeering laughters. And--she glanced once more at his face. If, as Dolly said, she knew nothing about him, she knew at least that a man with a mouth and eyes like Lovell’s was not apt to be other than he seemed.

“That’s a lucky escape for me,” he was saying gravely. “I’m glad you came out. Do you know you’re not looking well?”

It was no earthly business of his and it was not polite; which may have been what brought a faint flame to her cheeks.

“I’ve been indoors too much,” she returned with some haste and perfect truth. “I came out now for a walk.”

“So did I,” calmly; but the next minute they were smiling in each other’s face like two children.

“I may accompany you?” he said with a little deferential manner, foreign enough to a girl who was accustomed to men like Starr-Dalton. She nodded half shyly. Dolly would have gasped incredulously at the look on her stepsister’s face.

“I don’t know where to go,” she said, looking around her. She had turned Bedford Square, away from Hare’s Buildings, simply because she would not let herself go toward Fleet Street, on the chance of meeting Dick Lovell; just as he had strolled in the same direction while his courage about going to see her was oozing out of him.

“No!” said Lovell reflectively, little knowing they were both gloating on the instant reward of their individual virtue.

The afternoon was sunny, almost hot; enervating, as such winter days are. The park would be fit to sit in, but--he had no desire to be seen westward, either alone or otherwise. Especially otherwise, he decided hastily; it would not be fair.

“Regent’s Park,” he announced at last, for not a soul who knew him and could gossip would be there.

“Too far.” There was little spring to her step as she walked and he saw it.

“Hansom,” he answered as laconically. “We can sit down all the way there and back. You learn the joy of sitting down when you’re a photographer.”

He put her into the hansom as he had once in his life helped a princess into her carriage. As he did it she noticed the spotless cleanliness of his cuff, the fine white skin inside his wrist; something made her head swim a little as he got in beside her.

“Do you know,” said Lovell slowly, “I always have a queer feeling when I’m with you? That I’ve known you for a long time--for always, really--that everything you do or say is just what I know you will do or say.”

“You’ve known some one like me,” she answered, and she was not looking at him.

“I never knew anyone--like you!” he said coolly. He had something to say to her, but not here in a hansom, where she could not get away from him. He sat beside her quite silent; so content that it would have been rapture if a doubt had not been there, too.

And Magdalen, with the sun and the wind in her face, forgot Dolly and Mrs. Keith, and Stratharden; forgot even to forget that she was driving openly through the London streets, for all the world to see her red hair and black eyes. She turned to him with her lovely laugh as they left the hansom and strolled along a sun-dried path to a sunny bench backed by evergreens.

“Do you know,” she said, “that whenever I meet you you always want your own way? First you hustle me out of a restaurant by the shoulders; next you march me to tea with you and home in a hansom. To-day----”

“To-day I want my own way again,” with a curious quietness. The laughter was gone from his eyes that were eager, full of sweetness.

“I want--Magdalen, will you marry me?”

The slow, direct words should have startled her, but there was no surprise in her face. A hot color leaped there and died away.

“You see,” the low note of his voice made her quiver, “I’ve loved you ever since that night at Krug’s; I don’t know that you care, I can’t expect you to, but----”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she whispered. “You don’t even know that I mayn’t be married already.”

“Oh, I do!” said Dick Lovell. “That’s nonsense, you know,” with soft slowness. “Look at me, Magdalen.”

She could not lift her eyes to his strong, brown face; she looked instead at his blue serge sleeve. There was a tiny rip in it and she would have liked to mend it.

“Are you angry? Do you hate me?” the man asked as simply as he had asked, “Will you marry me?”

Her eyes got as high as his collar and rested on the bit of his throat between it and his ear. She had a mad desire to answer him with her lips there, to----She turned to him with a sudden pride, found--Heaven knew where.

“I’m glad,” she said. “No, don’t answer me. I want to tell you something. I’m not Madame Aline; my sister and I just live in her house and we left her door-plate. And----”

“Well?” said Lovell rather stupidly.

“That’s all now,” for the rest was Dolly’s business. “Except that my name’s Magdalen Clyde and I haven’t a penny on earth.”

“Did you think,” he softly asked, “that I was in love with the millinery business? As for names”--he had reddened a little--“do you think they matter much? Could you marry a Lovell--a plain one--as easily as if he had another name and a handle to it?”

She gave a little quick shiver. She had had enough of people with titles.

“Better,” she said. “I’m not anybody.”

“You’re Dark Magdalen! Why do you laugh? Didn’t you know that’s what I call you?”

She was not laughing; she was prouder of the way he said it than if he could have made her Queen of England. Yet she looked him in the face with a remembrance of Dolly and what Dolly would say.

“And you care a little?” His voice held a hundred tendernesses in it. “Enough to marry a man with just enough to keep you?”

“I care,” her voice was not steady. “But I----Oh, you must wait till I talk to my sister! There are things----I can’t leave her.”

She was stammering and she knew it, but Lovell did not seem to notice.

“There are things about me, too,” he said quickly.

“I don’t mean dark secrets, any more than yours are, but you ought to know them. I wasn’t born a photographer, Magdalen. But I’m getting on at it.”

“I didn’t suppose you were,” glancing at his dark, spare face, his threadbare serge that had never come off a “ready-made” counter. “Mr. Lovell, let it all go for to-day; don’t let us think who we are or what our relatives will say.”

The last thing did not cause him any solicitude; and, after all, there was time enough for explaining. He looked at her slim, gloved hands and wondered if those rings of his mother’s would fit her.

“Say Dick,” he coolly remarked, “and I’ll do anything you like. I don’t call you Miss Clyde, do I?”

“You ought to.” She looked at him with a sweet insolence that made him want to kiss the hem of her gown.

It struck him suddenly that while he was threadbare she was freshly and perfectly dressed, from her hat to her shoes. His brow darkened as he looked at her.

“I’ve been a brute,” he said, “a selfish brute! Look here, my darling; I’m poor. Do you mind? I mean really poor. I couldn’t give you many shoes like you’re wearing.”

“I have three pairs like them,” said Magdalen. “Perhaps they won’t be worn out by the time I marry you. Oh, Dick”--her eyes laughed as she looked at him--“how silly you are! My sister gave me these; she has money now; but we used often to be so poor that we were hungry. That night at Krug’s I’d only had dry bread all day.”

“I’ll give you better than that,” with a certain grim doggedness. “Magdalen, you’ll let me come and see you now, won’t you?”

Dolly’s rage at the hint of such a thing flashed over her. And Starr-Dalton--for nothing on earth would she run the chance of letting Lovell see a man like Starr-Dalton in her house.

“I don’t want you to,” she said simply. “You see, Dolly will be so angry about it she’ll say we’d no right to speak to each other. And she’s in some trouble just now; she’s worried. I think you’d better wait.”

That meant trusting to luck to see her. He was not going to have her make secret appointments with any man, even him.

“You know best,” he said not too willingly. “It--it’s rather rough, you know.”

“Do you suppose I don’t want you to come?” she asked almost fiercely. “I can’t invite you, that’s all. It’s not my house--it’s Dolly’s, I----”

She stopped and stared in front of her, the dark fire quenched in her eyes.

There, going past--and why was it that she knew without seeing her--was Mrs. Keith, a grim old figure in a dusty gown. And if she had seen her all she would have to do would be to follow Magdalen Clyde home.

Unconsciously the girl slipped close to Lovell’s side and looked at him as she had looked at him for the first time in her life, at Krug’s restaurant.

In front of all London--though it consisted just now of an old woman he had not noticed and two sparrows--he put his arm round her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I won’t worry you any more. I’ll swear, if you like, never to speak to you again till you send for me. Magdalen, can’t you see I love you? There is nothing on God’s earth for me but you.”

The arm she leaned against was iron, the shoulder against hers iron, too; in the strength and safety of them the color came to her face.

“Dick,” she said. “Oh, Dick!”

The man stooped and kissed her, since even the sparrows were gone; and the soul of Magdalen Clyde went into his keeping and his to her.

Without a word, since neither could speak, they moved away--in the paradise God lets some men and women stay in.

Ten minutes later a breathless old woman ran frantically after a hansom that drove away and, when there was no other to be had, cursed roundly in broad Scotch.

“I’ve bided my time too long, too long!” thought Mrs. Keith, and the fear in her stopped her senseless rage. “’Twas her, and--I’d thought you with her was a better man, a better man!”

She cursed again at the weariness of her feet as she went hurriedly on. It was a fool’s errand from the beginning; it was a beaten fool’s now, if that man were against her, with his hard eyes.