Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 28

"All is mine," said he quietly: "who was fool enough to fancy that I could forget you--conquer my love for;" and at these words his whole voice and manner changed in an instant into wildest pa.s.sion. "I must speak--now and never more--I love you still, fool that I am! Would G.o.d I had never seen you! No, not that. Thank G.o.d for that to the last: but would G.o.d I had died of that cholera! that I had never come here, conceited fool that I was, fancying that it was possible, after having once--No! Let me go, go anywhere, where I may burden you no more with my absurd dreams!--You, who have had the same thing said to you, and in finer words, a hundred times, by men who would not deign to speak to me!" and covering his face in his hands, he strode on, as if to escape.

"I never had the same thing said to me!"

"Never? How often have fine gentlemen, n.o.blemen, sworn that they were dying for you?"

"They never have said to me what you have done."

"No--I am clumsy, I suppose--"

"Mr. Headley, indeed you are unjust to yourself--unjust to me!"

"I--to you? Never! I know you better than you know yourself--see in you what no one else sees. Oh, what fools they are who say that love is blind! Blind? He sees souls in G.o.d's own light; not as they have become: but as they ought to become--can become--are already in the sight of Him who made them!"

"And what might I become?" asked she, half-frightened by the new earnestness of his utterance.

"How can I tell! Something infinitely too high for me, at least, who even now am not worthy to kiss the dust off your feet."

"Oh, do not speak so: little do you know--! No, Mr. Headley, it is you who are too good for me; too n.o.ble, single-eyed, self-sacrificing, to endure my vanity and meanness for a day."

"Madam, do not speak thus! Give me no word which my folly can distort into a ray of hope, unless you wish to drive me mad. No! it is impossible; and, were it possible, what but ruin to my soul? I should live for you, and not for my work. I should become a schemer, ambitious, intriguing, in the vain hope of proving myself to the world worthy of you. No; let it be. 'Let the dead bury their dead, and follow thou me.'"

She made no answer--what answer was there to make? And he strode on by her side in silence for full ten minutes. At last she was forced to speak.

"Mr. Headley, recollect that this conversation has gone too far for us to avoid coming to some definite understanding--"

"Then it shall, Miss St. Just. Then it shall, once and for all: formally and deliberately, it shall end now. Suppose,--I only say suppose,--that I could, without failing in my own honour, my duty to my calling, make myself such a name among good men that, poor parson though I be, your family need be ashamed of nothing about me, save my poverty? Tell me, now and for ever, could it be possible--"

He stopped. She walked on, silent, in her turn.

"Say no, as a matter of course, and end it!" said he, bitterly.

She drew a long breath, as if heaving off a weight.

"I cannot--dare not say it."

"It? Which of the two? yes, or no?"

She was silent.

He stopped, and spoke calmly and slowly. "Say that again, and tell me that I am not dreaming. You? the admired! the worshipped! the luxurious!--and no blame to you that you are what you were born--could you endure a little parsonage, the teaching village school-children, tending dirty old women, and petty cares the whole year round?"

"Mr. Headley," answered she, slowly and calmly, in her turn, "I could endure a cottage,--a prison, I fancy, at moments,--to escape from this world, of which I am tired, which will soon be tired of me: from women who envy me, impute to me ambitions as base as their own; from men who admire--not me, for they do not know me, and never will--but what in me --I hate them!--will give them pleasure. I hate it all, despise it all; despise myself for it all every morning when I wake! What does it do for me, but rouse in me the very parts of my own character which are most despicable, most tormenting? If it goes on, I feel I could become as frivolous, as mean, aye, as wicked as the worst. You do not know--you do not know--. I have envied the nuns their convents. I have envied Selkirk his desert island. I envy now the milkmaids there below: anything to escape and be in earnest, anything for some one to teach me to be of use! Yes, this cholera--and this war--though only, only its coming shadow has pa.s.sed over me,--and your words too--" cried she, and stopped and hesitated, as if afraid to tell too much--"they have wakened me--to a new life--at least to the dream of a new life!"

"Have you not Major Campbell?" said Headley, with a terrible effort of will.

"Yes--but has he taught me? He is dear, and good, and wise; but he is too wise, too great for me. He plays with me as a lion might with a mouse; he is like a grand angel far above in another planet, who can pity and advise, but who cannot--What am I saying?" and she covered her face with her hand.

She dropped her glove as she did so. Headley picked it up and gave it to her: as he did so their hands met; and their hands did not part again.

"You know that I love you, Valencia St. Just."

"Too well! too well!"

"But you know, too, that you do not love me."

"Who told you so? What do you know? What do I know? Only that I long for some one to make me--to make me as good as you are!" and she burst into tears.

"Valencia, will you trust me?"

"Yes!" cried she, looking up at him suddenly: "if you will not go to the war."

"No--no--no! Would you have me turn traitor and coward to G.o.d; and now, of all moments in my life?"

"n.o.ble creature!" said she; "you will make me love you whether I wish or not."

What was it, after all, by which Frank Headley won Valencia's love? I cannot tell. Can you tell, sir, how you won the love of your wife? As little as you can tell of that still greater miracle--how you have kept her love since she found out what manner of man you were.

So they paced homeward, hand in hand, beside the shining ripples, along the Dinas sh.o.r.e. The birches breathed fragrance on them; the night-hawk churred softly round their path; the stately mountains smiled above them in the moonlight, and seemed to keep watch and ward over their love, and to shut out the noisy world, and the harsh babble and vain fashions of the town. The summer lightning flickered to the westward; but round them the rich soft night seemed full of love,--as full of love as their own hearts were, and, like them, brooding silently upon its joy. At last the walk was over; the kind moon sank low behind the hills; and the darkness hid their blushes as they paced into the sleeping village, and their hands parted unwillingly at last.

When they came into the hall, through the group of lounging gownsmen and tourists, they found Bowie arguing with Mrs. Lewis, in his dogmatic Scotch way,--

"So ye see, madam, there's no use defending the drunken loon any-more at all; and here will my leddies have just walked their bonny legs off, all through that carnal sin of drunkenness, which is the curse of your Welsh populaaation."

"And not quite unknown north of Tweed either, Bowie," said Valencia, laughing. "There now, say no more about it. We have had a delightful walk, and n.o.body is the least tired. Don't say any more, Mrs. Lewis: but tell them to get us some supper. Bowie, so my lord has come in?"

"This half-hour good!"

"Has he had any sport?"

"Sport! aye, troth! Five fish in the day. That's a river indeed at Bettws! Not a pawky wee burn, like this Aberglaslyn thing."

"Only five fish?" said Valencia, in a frightened tone.

"Fish, my leddy, not trouts, I said. I thought ye knew better than that by this time."

"Oh, salmon?" cried Valencia, relieved. "Delightful. I'll go to him this moment."

And upstairs to Scoutbush's room she went.

He was sitting in dressing-gown and slippers, sipping his claret, and fondling his fly-book (the only one he ever studied _con amore_), with a most complacent face. She came in and stood demurely before him, holding her broad hat in both hands before her knees, like a school-girl, her face half-hidden in the black curls. Scoutbush looked up and smiled affectionately, as he caught the light of her eyes and the arch play of her lips.

"Ah! there you are, at a pretty time of night! How beautiful you look, Val! I wish my wife may be half as pretty!"

Valencia made him a prim curtsey.

"I am delighted to hear of my lord's good sport. He will choose to be in a good humour, I suppose."

"Good humour? _ca va sans dire_! Three stone of fish in three hours!"