Christina Part 37

"I confess to being a little surprised that Fergusson ever got himself up to the scratch of asking a rich woman to marry him," Rupert said, with some hesitation. "It doesn't seem--quite like the man."

"It wasn't in the least like the man," Christina answered demurely.

"And--I'm afraid--I--made myself into a kind of--of matchmaker--or G.o.d in the machine, or something of that sort."

Rupert laughed outright.

"It was all your doing, was it?" he questioned, looking at her with smiling kindliness. "Did you----"

"I don't think I can exactly tell you how I--I--worked the trick," she laughed a little confusedly. "But Cicely says it wouldn't ever have happened but for me. And I am glad."

"So am I--very glad. Fergusson is a lucky man. A man who gets a woman like Cicely to take care of him, may consider a part of every day well spent, if he spends it in singing a _Te Deum_ of his own. And Sir Arthur's lost pendant--was it ever found?"

"Yes; eventually the police traced the woman who had been in the railway carriage with Lady Congreve's bag, and she confessed to having stolen the jewel."

After these words, silence again fell between them, until Christina once more made an attempt to rise.

"I ought to go back," she said, when Rupert's detaining hand again fell on her arm. "Baba----"

"Why should you go back when I want you here," was the audacious response. "I want you much more than Baba does."

The hand he had laid on her arm lingered there; over the latter half of his sentence, his voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and the rose tints on Christina's cheeks brightened. "I believe I have been wanting you for quite a long time," he went on, deliberately, his eyes watching how the colour came and went on her face, his hand still resting on her arm. "Would you like to know how often, when I was wandering about the byways of Europe, I thought of that evening in Mrs. Nairne's oak-panelled parlour, when I told you so many things about myself?

Would you like to know how often you came into my mind?"

Christina's dark head was a little bent, her eyes were fastened on a clump of bracken, blazing golden in the level sun-rays, her voice was very low and a little shaky.

"I--shouldn't have thought you would remember me at all," she said, the touch of his hand upon her arm filling her with a sensation of strange gladness.

"On that afternoon I told you, I am sure I told you, how restful you were," Rupert continued, speaking with an eagerness that gave him an oddly boyish manner; "something in your personality rested me then, and I have never forgotten it. You rest me now," he added suddenly, his hand slipping from her arm, and folding itself over her hand. "I came here to-day, feeling as if the world were a sorry enough place, and I a poor fool who had messed up my life, and was at the end of my tether.

But when I saw you, sitting here in the sunshine, I felt as if--some day--the sunlight might come back to my life."

"Could _I_--bring it back?" Her voice still shook, but she lifted her eyes bravely to look into his face, and he bent nearer to her, and gathered both her hands into his.

"Little Christina," he said. "I don't know whether it is fair, even to think of asking you to spend your fresh young life in bringing sunshine back to mine, but--because I am a selfish brute--because--I--want you--I am going to ask you what I believe I have no right to ask you.

And yet--it was Margaret's thought, too--Margaret's wish," he added, under his breath.

"Aunt Margaret's wish!" the girl exclaimed. "That I--that you----"

She broke off confusedly, trying instinctively to draw her hands from his, but feeling his clasp tighten over them.

"Shall I tell you what she said to me about you the very last time I saw her?" he asked. "I think she knew I was going to be very lonely, and she spoke of you. I have not forgotten the actual words she used; they came back to me just now, as I sat here beside you; she said: 'She would make a man who cared for her, a most tender and loving wife. She has a sweet, strong soul.'"

More and more vividly the colour deepened on Christina's face, and she did not answer, because speech at that moment was a physical impossibility. Only her hands lay pa.s.sive in his grasp, she no longer tried to draw them away.

"I think Margaret knew--how I should learn to need you," Rupert went on, his voice vibrating along the girl's nerves, and sending little thrills of happiness through her whole being. "She understood how much you could help me, if you would."

"_If I would?_" she echoed, a tremulous gladness in her voice.

"But--I--am so young, so ignorant, not a bit worthy of--of all you say," she ended incoherently.

"Could you some day learn to care for me, if I tried to make you care?"

was his answer. "Could you--some day--care for an old fellow like me, who hasn't even the best of his life and love to offer you? Could you do that, little girl?"

"I don't call you an old fellow," she said indignantly; "and--I--don't think--I have got to learn to care. I--think--I have--learnt--already."

Very gently, with a sort of tender reverence, he drew her into his arms and kissed her, then put her away from him again, and said quietly--

"Is it fair to you, I wonder; is it fair to you to take all your best, and give you only the second best in return?"

"But if I would rather have your second best, than the best from any other man in the world?" she said quickly. "What then? If it is a greater joy to me to think of being your rest and sunshine, than to be anything else in the world; what then?"

She put her hands upon his shoulders, pushing him a little further from her, that she might look fully into his eyes. "I don't believe any man really ever understands a woman," she added, inconsequently, with a laugh.

"Where have you learnt your knowledge of mankind?" he questioned; "and what makes you say we don't understand the other half of the world?"

"Because, if you did, you would know that when a woman cares for a man, she would rather just be a servant in his house than go altogether out of his life. Perhaps we all prefer the best, but a woman who cares, would rather have the second best, than nothing at all."

"And are you a woman--who cares?" he whispered, drawing her back into his arms, with a sudden sense of her sweetness, her desirableness; "would you rather be----"

"You haven't asked me yet to be anything," she answered, with a touch of audacity, that sat charmingly upon her--"at least, you only mentioned rest, and sunshine, and--and intangible things of that sort."

"And if I asked you to be my wife?" His lips were very near to hers, his voice in itself was a caress, and Christina's heart beats nearly choked her. "If--I want you for my wife, little girl?"

Her answer was quite inarticulate, if indeed she answered him at all, but she allowed him to kiss her lips, and Rupert knew that her answer was given him with that kiss.

"You would not let any man kiss your lips, unless you loved him well enough to marry him," he said, after a moment's pause, and Christina looked at him with happy, laughing eyes.

"I would not let any man kiss me at all, unless I--wanted to marry him," she answered; "and----"

"You want to marry me?" Rupert interrupted with a boyishly spontaneous laugh, such as she had never heard from him before.

"Yes, I want to marry you," she said demurely, drawing herself away from him again, and looking mischievously into his face; "and, do you know, this--isn't the first time I--I have thought of marrying you?"

"What do you mean?" Rupert's mystified expression brought a dimpling smile out upon her face.

"Do you remember the girl who answered your advertis.e.m.e.nt in the matrimonial column of a certain Sunday paper? That girl----"

"Was it you?" he exclaimed. "Were you the girl to whom I wrote? The girl I appointed to meet at Margaret's house? Could any coincidence be more strange?"

"I was C.M. who answered that advertis.e.m.e.nt, because she was at the very end of her resources, her hope," Christina answered gravely. "I felt horrible when I did it. I felt you would think the very worst of me for writing to you at all, but I was nearly in despair that day; there seemed just a loophole of escape for me, if I found--you were--kind and good."

"Poor little girl, my poor little girl." His arm drew her close. "You wrote the dearest, most simple little letter. I never thought the worse of you. I never thought badly of you at all. I made up my mind to help you get work; and I recommended you to Cicely; at least, I went so far as to tell Cicely I knew of someone who might do for Baba."

"But she didn't take me on your recommendation?"

"No, she said references were necessary, and----"

"And in the end she took me practically with no references at all, and--the story has just worked itself out to this wonderful ending."

"Is it such a wonderful ending?" He helped her to her feet, and they stood watching the golden sun drop slowly towards the golden hills.

"Is it--the ending you would have chosen for yourself?"