In the Year of Jubilee Part 29

'No--none at all.'

They stood apart, and spoke with constraint. Nancy's bosom heaved, as though she had been hastening overmuch; her face was deeply coloured; her eyes had an unwonted appearance, resembling those of a night-watcher at weary dawn. She cast quick glances about the room, but with the diffidence of an intruder. Her att.i.tude was marked by the same characteristic; she seemed to shrink, to be ashamed.

'Come and sit down,' said Tarrant cheerfully, as he wheeled a chair.

She obeyed him, and he, stooping beside her, offered his lips. Nancy kissed him, closing her eyes for the moment, then dropping them again.

'It seems a long time, Nancy--doesn't it?'

'Yes--a very long time.'

'You couldn't come on Sunday?'

'I found my father very ill. I didn't like to leave home till to-day.'

'Your father ill?--You said nothing of it in your letter.'

'No--I didn't like to--with the other things.'

A singular delicacy this; Tarrant understood it, and looked at her thoughtfully. Again she was examining the room with hurried glance; upon him her eyes did not turn. He asked questions about Mr. Lord. Nancy could not explain the nature of his illness; he had spoken of gout, but she feared it must be something worse; the change in him since she went away was incredible and most alarming. This she said in short, quick sentences, her voice low. Tarrant thought to himself that in her too, a very short time had made a very notable change; he tried to read its significance, but could reach no certainty.

'I'm sorry to hear all this--very sorry. You must tell me more about your father. Take off your hat, dear, and your gloves.'

Her gloves she removed first, and laid them on her lap; Tarrant took them away. Then her hat; this too he placed on the table. Having done so, he softly touched the plaits of her hair. And, for the first time, Nancy looked up at him.

'Are you glad to see me?' she asked, in a voice that seemed subdued by doubt of the answer.

'I am--very glad.'

His hand fell to her shoulder. With a quick movement, a stifled exclamation, the girl rose and flung her arms about him.

'Are you really glad?--Do you really love me?'

'Never doubt it, dear girl.'

'Ah, but I can't help. I have hardly slept at night, in trying to get rid of the doubt. When you opened the door, I felt you didn't welcome me. Don't you think of me as a burden? I can't help wondering why I am here.'

He took hold of her left hand, and looked at it, then said playfully:

'Of course you wonder. What business has a wife to come and see her husband without the ring on her finger?'

Nancy turned from him, opened the front of her dress, unknotted a string of silk, and showed her finger bright with the golden circlet.

'That's how I must wear it, except when I am with you. I keep touching--to make sure it's there.'

Tarrant kissed her fingers.

'Dear,'--she had her face against him--'make me certain that you love me. Speak to me like you did before. Oh, I never knew in my life what it was to feel ashamed!'

'Ashamed? Because you are married, Nancy?'

'Am I really married? That seems impossible. It's like having dreamt that I was married to you. I can hardly remember a thing that happened.'

'The registry at Teignmouth remembers,' he answered with a laugh. 'Those books have a long memory.'

She raised her eyes.

'But wouldn't you undo it if you could?--No, no, I don't mean that. Only that if it had never happened--if we had said good-bye before those last days--wouldn't you have been glad now?'

'Why, that's a difficult question to answer,' he returned gently. 'It all depends on your own feeling.'

For whatever reason, these words so overcame Nancy that she burst into tears. Tarrant, at once more lover-like, soothed and fondled her, and drew her to sit on his knee.

'You're not like your old self, dear girl. Of course, I can understand it. And your father's illness. But you mustn't think of it in this way.

I do love you, Nancy. I couldn't unsay a word I said to you--I don't wish anything undone.'

'Make me believe that. I think I should be quite happy then. It's the hateful thought that perhaps you never wanted me for your wife; it _will_ come, again and again, and it makes me feel as if I would rather have died.'

'Send such thoughts packing. Tell them your husband wants all your heart and mind for himself.'

'But will you never think ill of me?'

She whispered the words, close-clinging.

'I should be a contemptible sort of brute.'

'No. I ought to have--. If we had spoken of our love to each other, and waited.'

'A very proper twelvemonth's engagement,--meetings at five o'clock tea,--fifty thousand love-letters,--and all that kind of thing. Oh, we chose a better way. Our wedding was among the leaves and flowers. You remember the glow of evening sunlight between the red pine and the silver birch? I hope that place may remain as it is all our lives; we will go there--'

'Never! Never ask me to go there. I want to forget--I hope some day I may forget.'

'If you hope so, then I will hope the same.'

'And you love me--with real, husband's love--love that will last?'

'Why should _I_ answer all the questions?' He took her face between his hands. What if the wife's love should fail first?'

'You can say that lightly, because you know--'

'What do I know?'

'You know that I am _all_ love of you. As long as I am myself, I must love you. It was because I had no will of my own left, because I lived only in the thought of you day and night--'

Their lips met in a long silence.

'I mustn't stay past four o'clock,' were Nancy's next words. 'I don't like to be away long from the house. Father won't ask me anything, but he knows I'm away somewhere, and I'm afraid it makes him angry with me.'

She examined the room. 'How comfortable you are here! what a delightful old place to live in!'