Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
"That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us."
November has come upon us with a garment of rain and fog, with leaden skies and sodden earth, and the land looks like one vast mournful burying ground, with its fallen leaves, dead plants, and flowerless brown stalks. Nature is shrouded, motionless, bound hand and foot beneath her covering of decay, and looking abroad it is hard to believe that spring will ever come back, that green shoots will thrust their way through the sullen earth, tender buds spring out of yonder bare brown trees. The gloominess of the weather has its outcome in the newspapers, where murder succeeds murder with sinister rapidity, and the heavy, deathly air seems to prompt the souls of men to deeds of rapine, crime, and slaughter. But to me these sluggish days bring no sense of dulness and oppression, I am not even longing for spring, with the passion of longing I used to know all through the dead, silent, winter months. I have Paul now, and he is life, and home, and love, and seasons bound up in one, and since he is mine I lack nothing. The chill winds have shaken every leaf from the trees in our green parlour, the ground is all dank and dripping, it knows our faces no more; but we do not care. We are cosier indoors than we ever were out.
We have been playing at a foolish game this past month, Paul and I. We made a bad beginning in being so much in love with each other, and we have gone steadily down, deeper and deeper. Every day we go a little further, for love either increases or diminishes; passionately as one may care for a thing to-day, one can love it even better to-morrow, there is no standing still. And as besottedly fond as Paul is of me, so I am of him, and an uncommonly pretty pair of fools we make. At the present moment there is no one to take heed of us, fortunately; no one, that is to say, but Venus, who is shaking an uncommonly loose leg in the distance, and as she is hanging on the wall without any visual power, save that given by cobalt blue badly laid on, we may be said to be tolerably secure from unkind criticism.
We are in the old school-room, from whence Amberley's rule has for ever departed; the curtains are drawn, and we are sitting before the fire. It is our favourite haunt, for the boys are far too well-bred to intrude upon us, indeed they avert their jolly faces if they happen to meet us, as though a recognized pair of lovers were the most immoral spectacle in the world, and there is no chance here, as in the drawing-room, of Simpkins or the footman walking in every five minutes or so, on some trifling pretext or errand.
"Have you heard from your father yet?" asks Paul.
"No. Paul!”
"Yes."
"Do you know, that I really think he was sorry when he went away———"
"Well, darling?"
"Nothing! only I don't think I can ever feel comfortably rebellious with him again; I shall have a sort of half-and-balf feeling that will make me a detestable mixture."
"You won't be here very long, little one," he says; "you will be at The Towers before he has been back very long."
"Shall I?" I ask, doubtfully. Somehow it seems natural to me that Paul should be my lover, but I never look ahead or fancy myself his wife.
(A pause, which we fill up.)
"I want to ask you a few questions," I say, presently. "Will you ever swear at me when we are married?"
"Good heavens, no! I never was a very good temper, but I hope I know how to behave like a man."
"And do not all men?" I ask, meditatively. "I always thought they did at home, you know; it's very nice to find they don't. You had better never put me out," I add, pinching his brown cheek; "for I have a command of language that would frighten you. Tell me, do you ever shy dish-covers at people?"
"Never."
"Would you ever call me a peacock, a dummy, a mummy, a gawk, a mawk, or a beast?"
"I won't promise. They are pretty names, Nell—some of his?"
"Of course! but when he wishes to be especially withering he calls me that 'beauty.'"
"Lucky little woman," says Paul, fondly, "for both her lover and her father to have such a high opinion of her good looks!"
"Yes, indeed!" I say, laughing; "only, you see, he means it rather differently to the way you do!"
Here our conversation becomes ridiculous for repetition.
"It is my turn now," says Paul, presently, "to ask you a few questions; for it may be as well that we should know each other's little weaknesses before marriage as after. Do you ever go into hysterics?"
"It is like poor Martha Snell's staying," I say, laughing; "'who would if her could, but her couldn't.' I would if I could, but I don't know the way. Hysterics is a luxury papa would never have permitted."
"Do you nag?"
"I despise a nagging woman!" I say, sitting suddenly upright, "it's so intensely mean! No, Paul, I shall get into a boiling rage, and then I shall have done with it."
"Well spoken" he says heartily. "Get into as many passions as you like, my pet, but never nag, and don't sulk; more love is worn out that way than by any other. Now for another question. Will you ever flirt? I could stand a good deal from you, Nell, but I would never stand that."
"Are you afraid?" I ask proudly. "Is your opinion of me so bad as that?"
"There is only one man I should ever be afraid of your taking too much notice of," he says. "You know who that is; some day perhaps you will compare me unfavourably with him, and———"
"Have you not lost that old madness? Paul, Paul! is there not a wide difference between pity and love?"
"There is, but I hate to think that any man ever uttered a word of love to you save me, and—confess now," he goes on, half jestingly, half earnestly, "that you don't think me half as good as he is?"
"You will not get me to say that you are, for you are not," I say, shaking my head. "You are too masterful and determined; you will have your own way, and you are more than a little bit selfish, and———"
"A jealous fool!" he says, finishing my sentence in a different way to what I had intended. "Well, you have taught me one vice I never knew before, and that's jealousy."
"Is it a vice? I think the very pith and marrow of love must be gone when lovers grow careless about each other's likes and dislikes. Paul," I ask, suddenly, "do you think that by any possibility, under any circumstances, you could fall in love with Silvia again?"
"Can a man be in love with two women at once? Could you be in love with two men, Nell?"
"I suppose not; only you loved her first, you know."
"And I love you now, you know."
Are you as fond of me as you ever were of her?"
"What do you think?"
"That you like me best."
"Well, I'm inclined to think the same. For one thing, I have a respect for you."
"That is a funny idea! I never heard of lovers doing that before."
"Nevertheless, it is 'the sweet marjoram of the salad,' the very salt of real love. The divine passion, as it is inaptly called, may burn brightly and hotly enough for a time, but it does not last unless it has something more substantial to go upon than sheer love and admiration."
"And did you respect Silvia?"
"Until I found her out."
I do not think I am jealous now of Paul's first love; I might be if she were here in her real flesh and blood beauty, but out of sight is very truly out of mind, and she is to me in my warm living, every-day happiness, no more than a half-forgotten shadow. Paul's thoughts are mine, and since he never thinks of her, neither do I. I have never repeated to him her wild words at Luttrell; somehow it has seemed to me needless and, in a certain sense, dishonourable—she has lost, I have won; would there not be a species of cowardice in holding her impotent boasts up to ridicule?
"I wonder what she would say if she knew about us," I say aloud.
"It would not interest her," says Paul, carelessly; "her own affairs are far more engrossing no doubt. I say, Nell, when is your father coming back?"
"In March."
"Three whole months and part of another. If you think my patience will hold out till then, little woman, you are mistaken. I shall make you marry me before he comes back, to make all sure."
"No, you will not!" I say quickly; "just think of mother. And she has been such an angel to us. Only think of what it would be if he came back and found me gone! Supposing she had refused to hear of our being engaged or let you come here, save as an ordinary visitor, what should we have done then, pray?"
"Fitted up a cow-house, my dear, and sat in it from 'rosy morn till dewy eve.'"
"And quarrelled when we grew hungry," I say, laughing; "but mother is really frightened out of her wits. It is all very fine for us, you know, but we dance and she pays the piper."
"Sweet soul!" says Paul. "Now, if all mothers-in law were like her———"
"Wait until she is yours," I say slyly; "you don't seem to know half the difficulties that lie in our path!"
"If he is very bad," says Paul, "it's easy enough to run away. Alice did."
"Yes; but The Towers is not far to run away to."
"I should like," he says, tightening his clasp on me, "to walk into a church one morning (you could put on a white bonnet and a clean print), without a gaping crowd of people looking on, and a pack of idiotic children throwing flowers for us to tumble over, and you and I be made man and wife; then eat a good breakfast, and set out for Paris, without being spattered with salt and pelted with slippers."
"You would take me to Paris?" I say in delight.
"Rather! you have never been abroad, have you?"
"Never!"
"I wish I could take you with me to Rome next month."
"To Rome! next month!" I repeat, sitting up and pushing the hair back from my eyes.
"You are going away, Paul?"
"Yes, little one, for a few days. I have to settle poor Lennox's affairs; and it is a thing that cannot be got out of. I have been putting it off as long as possible, but I shall be back by Christmas."
"I have only just found you," I say, my lips quivering: "and are you going to leave me so soon?"
"My flower," he says, taking me in his arms, "it is worse to me than to you, this separation, don't make it any the harder, for I must go."
But I only clasp my arms close about his neck and shiver; somehow this going away seems to lay a cold finger upon my heart, and change all my safe, glad trust in Paul's love to a trembling, miserable fever of unrest.
"Paul!" I say in a low voice; "when two people love each other beyond everything, don't you think something or other generally happens to them?"
"They get married."
"No! one or other of them dies, or they get separated, or—or—something."
"Who could possibly separate us?" he asks, almost sternly; are you not sure of yourself, Nell?"
"I was thinking of you, Paul; you will see so many people."
"Are you judging me out of your own heart?" he asks, still gravely; "would any amount of seeing people, make you forget me for a moment?"
"I do not answer; I am struggling against the unreasonable feeling of dread that the mention of this short absence has brought me. I have been living in a fool's paradise lately; every day, every hour, he has been close at hand, under my very eyes, and it smites me with a bitter, desolate pang to think that for a space he will be gone, his place stand empty, be out of reach of the sound of my voice, the touch of my hand.
I think Paul sees the misery of my face, for he takes it between his two hands, and looks at me with passionate love and tenderness.
"Is it not worth the pain of parting, sweetheart, to come back to each other again? Shall we not love even better for the days spent apart?"
"'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,"' I quote ruefully; "but we don't want to grew any fonder than we are now; and as to that hateful word, good-bye, I wish I had never, never got to say it to you!"
"When I come back," he says, "I will never leave you again until you are my wife; never any more, little Nell! I shall miss you horribly," he says, with a falter in his strong voice, as he winds a long tress of my hair round his neck; "I shall weary for a sight of your soft face, for a touch of your seet lips! Will you long for me, Nell?"
I look up into his dangerous, passionate, brown eyes—the eyes that have swayed me so absolutely from the beginning, and which, if they beckoned me over flood and flame and yawning pit, I must needs follow, never recking where my feet trod.
"I love you," I say, with a long-drawn, quivering sigh ; "do you know what that means?"
"Never desert me, my angel," he says, looking down with almost fierce worship into my upturned face; "for if you do—better far had it been that I died before I met you."