Old Kensington Part 22

Her face changed a little, and Robert's brightened, though he tried to look as usual.

'Not everybody,' he said. 'Not if----' He took the soft hand in his that was lying on the wall beside him. 'Dolly! will you come too?' he said.

'Me?' cried the unabashed Dolly. 'Oh, Robert, how could I?'

'You could come if I married you,' said Robert, in his quiet voice and most restrained manner. 'Dearest Dorothea, don't you think you can learn to love me? It will be nearly five months before I start.'

It was all so utterly incomprehensible that the girl did not quite realise her cousin's words. Robert was looking very strange and unlike himself; Dolly could hardly believe that it was not some effect of the dazzle of light in her own eyes. He was paler than usual; he seemed somehow stirred from his habitual ways and self. She thought it was not even his voice that she heard speaking. 'Is this being in love?' she was saying to herself. A little bewildered flush came into her cheeks. She still saw the sky, and the garden, and the figures under the tree; then for a minute everything vanished, as tangible things vanish before the invisible,--just as spoken words are hushed and lose their meaning when the silent voices cry out.

It was but for a moment. There she stood again, staring at Robert with her innocent, grey-eyed glance.

Henley was a big, black-and-white melancholy young man, with a blue shaved chin. To-day his face was pale, his mouth was quivering, his hair was all on end. Could this be Robert who was so deliberate; who always knew his own mind; who looked at his watch so often in church while music was going on? Even now, from habit, he was turning it about in his pocket. This little trick made Dolly feel more than anything else that it was all true--that her cousin loved her--incredible though it might appear--and yet even still she doubted.

'_Me_, Robert?' repeated Dorothea, in her clear, childish tones, looking up with her frank yet timid eyes. 'Are you _sure_?'

'I have been sure ever since I first saw you,' said Henley, smiling down at her, 'at Kensington, three years ago. Do you remember the s...o...b..ll, Dolly?'

Then Dolly's eyes fell, and she stood with a tender, puzzled face, listening to her first tale of love. She suddenly pulled away her hand, shy and blushing.

The swans had hardly pa.s.sed beyond the garden-terrace; the fisherman had only thrown his line once again; Dolly's mamma had time to shift her parasol; that was all. Henley waited, with his handsome head a little bent. He was regaining his composure; he knew too much of his cousin's uncompromising ways to be made afraid by her silence. He stood pulling at his watch, and looking at her--at the straight white figure amid dazzling blue and green; at the line of the sweet face still turned away from him.

'I thought you would have understood me better?' he said, reproachfully.

Still Dolly could not speak. For a moment her heart had beat with an innocent triumph, and then came a doubt. Did she love him--could she love him? Had he then cared for her all this time, when she herself had been so cold and so indifferent, and thinking so little of him? Only yesterday she had told Rhoda she would never marry. Was it yesterday?

No, it was to-day, an hour ago.... What had she done to deserve so much from him?--what had she done to be so overprized and loved? At the thought quick upspringing into her two grey eyes came the tears, sparkling like the diamonds in Rhoda's cross.

'I never thought you thought,' Dolly began. 'Oh, Robert! you have been in earnest all this time, and I only--only playing.'

'Don't be unhappy,' said her cousin. 'It was very natural; I should not have wished it otherwise. I did not want to speak to you till I had something worth your acceptance.'

'All this long time!' repeated Dolly.

Did the explanations of true love ever yet run smooth? 'Dolly!' cried Mrs. Palmer, from under the tree.

'Hulloa, Robert!' shouted George, coming across the gra.s.s towards them.

'Oh, Robert!' said Dorothea, earnestly, unexpectedly, with a sudden resolution to be true--true to him and to herself, 'thank you a thousand times for what you have told me: only it mustn't be--I don't care enough for you, dear Robert! You deserve----'

Henley said not a word. He stood with a half-incredulous smile; his eyes were still fixed on Dolly's sweet face; he did not answer George, who again called out something as he came up. As for Dolly, she turned to her brother and sprang to meet him, and took his arm as if for protection, and then she walked quickly away without another look, and Henley remained standing where she had been. Instead of the white-muslin maiden, the cygnets may have seen a black-silk young man, who looked at his watch, and then walked away too; while the fisherman quietly baited his line and went on with his sport.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ROSES HAVE THORNS AND SILVER FOUNTAINS MUD.

Love me with thine hand stretched out, Freely, open-minded, Love me with thy loitering foot, Hearing one behind it.

The doors of the old Library at All Saints' were open wide to admit the sunshine: it lighted up the starched frill collars of _Fundator noster_ as he hung over the entrance. It was good stiff starch, near four hundred years old. The volumes stood in their places, row upon row, line after line, twinkling into the distant corners of the room; here and there a bra.s.s lock gleamed, or some almost forgotten t.i.tle in faded gold, or the links of the old Bible chained to its oaken stand.... So the books stood marshalled in their places: brown, and swept by time, by dust, brushed by the pa.s.sing generations that had entered one by one, bringing their spoils, and placing them safe upon the shelves, and vanishing away. What a silent Babel and medley of time, and s.p.a.ce, and languages, and fancies, and follies! Here and there stands a fat dictionary, or prophetic grammar, the interpreter of echoes to other echoes. So, from century to century, the tradition is handed down, and from silent print and signs it thrills into life and sound....

Those are not books, but living voices in the recess of the old library.

There is a young man stumping up and down the narrow pa.s.sage, a young woman leaning against a worm-eaten desk. Are they talking of roots, of curves? or are they youthful metaphysicians speculating upon the unknown powers of the soul?

'Oh! George,' Dolly says, 'I am glad you think I was right.'

'Right! Of course you would have been very wrong to do otherwise,' says George, as usual, extremely indignant. 'Of course you are right to refuse him: you don't care for him; I can see that at a glance.... It is out of the question. Poor fellow! He is a very good fellow, but not at all worthy of you. It is altogether preposterous. No, Dolly,' said the young fellow, melting; 'you don't know--how should you?--what it is--what the real thing is. Never let yourself be deceived by any Brummagem and paste, when the real Koh-i-noor is still to be found--a gem of the purest water,' said George, gently.

Dolly listened, but she was only half convinced by George's earnestness.

'I would give anything that this had not happened,' the young man went on. Dolly listened, and said but little in answer. When George scolded her for having unduly encouraged Robert, she meekly denied the accusation, though her brother would not accept her denial.

'Had she then behaved so badly? Was Robert unhappy? Would he never forgive her? Should she never see him again?' Dolly listened sadly, wondering, and leaning against the old desk. There was a book lying open upon it--the History of the Universe--with many pictures of strange beasts and serpents, roaring, writhing, and whisking their tails, with the Garden of Eden mapped out, and the different sorts of angels and devils duly enumerated. Dolly's mind was not on the old book, but in the world outside it; she was standing again by the river and listening to Robert's voice. The story he told her no longer seemed new and strange.

It was ended for ever, and yet it would never finish as long as she lived. She had thought no one would ever care for her, and he had loved her, and she had sent him away; but he had loved her. Had she made a mistake, notwithstanding all that George was saying? Dolly, loving the truth, loving the right, trying for it heartily, in her slow circuitous way, might make mistakes in life, but they would be honest ones, and that is as much as any of us can hope for, and so, if she strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel, it will be forgiven her. George's opposition was too vague to influence her. When he warned her against Henley, it sounded unreasonable. Warning! There was no need of warning. She had said no to her cousin. Already the terrace seemed distant miles and miles off, hours and hours ago, though she could see it through the window, and the swans on the river, and the sunlight striking flame upon the water: she could hardly realise that she had been there, and that with a word and a hasty movement she had sent Robert away of her own deliberate will.

'Yes,' said George, coming up and banging his hand down upon the big book before her; 'you were right, Dolly. He isn't half good enough for you. This is not like the feeling that I and Rhoda----'

But Dolly interrupted him almost angrily. 'Not good enough! It is because he is too good, George, that I--I am not--not worthy of him.'

It was more than she could bear to hear George speaking so.

Was Robert unhappy? had she used him ill? The thoughts seemed to smite her as they pa.s.sed. She began to cry again--foolish girl!--and George, as he watched her worthless tears dribbling down upon the valuable ma.n.u.script, began to think that perhaps, after all, his sister had wished him to blame, instead of approving of her decision. He was bound to sympathise, since she had kept his secret. 'Don't, Dolly,' he said; 'you will spoil the little devils if you cry over the book.' He spoke so kindly, that Dolly smiled, and began to wipe her eyes. It was not a little thing that George should speak so kindly to her again. When she looked up she saw that he was signalling, and bowing, and waving his cap through the open window.

'It is the girls. They ought not to miss our college library,' he said, gravely; and then he walked towards the door, to meet a sound of voices and a trampling of feet.

As for Dorothea, with a sudden shy impulse she escaped, tears, handkerchief, and all, and disappeared into the most distant niche of the gallery: many footsteps came sounding up the wooden staircase, and Henley's voice was mingling with the Miss Morgans' shrill treble.

'How funny to see so many books!' said Zoe, who was a very stupid girl.

(Clever people generally make the same remarks as stupid ones, only they are in different words.)

'What a delicious old place!' cried Rhoda, coming in. She was usually silent, and not given to ecstasies.

'Why didn't John bring us here before?' said Ca.s.sie. 'I do envy you, Mr.

George. How nice to be able to read all these books!'

'I am not so sure of that,' said George, laughing.

Meanwhile, Zoe had stumped up to the desk, where the history of the whole world was lying open.

'Why, look here,' she said; 'somebody has been reading, I do believe.

How funny!'

As for Henley, he had already begun to examine the pictures that hung over every niche. He did not miss one of them as he walked quickly down the gallery. In the last niche of all he found the picture he was in search of. It was not that of a dignitary of the church. It was a sweet face, with brown crisp locks, and clear grey eyes shining from beneath a frown. The face changed, as pictures don't change, when he stood in the arch of the little recess. The pale cheeks glowed, the frown trembled and cleared away. She wondered if he would speak to her or go away.

Henley hesitated for an instant, and--spoke.

'Dolly, that was not an answer you gave me just now. You did not think that would content me, did you?' he said; and as he looked at her fixedly, her eyes fell. 'Dolly, you do love me a little?' he cried; 'you cannot send me away?'

'I thought I ought to send you away,' she faltered, looking up at last, and her whole heart was in her face. 'Robert, I don't know if I love you; but I love you to love me,' she said. And her sweet voice trembled as she spoke.