Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV.
Shall I enforce thy love? I could:
Shall I entreat thy love? I will."
Four o'clock struck ten minutes ago; but I am not at the rendezvous. I am loitering slowly along the meadows that lead to the running brook, and I am possessed by a keen overmastering inclination to turn round and run home again as fast as ever I can pelt. As yet, however, I have not forfeited my claim to valour, and as I go along, scarcely dragging one foot after the other, I look idly about me. This last September day is very different to that one little more than two months ago, when I wore my wreath of flowers, and later when I told George, with such grand triumph, that I was "going away." Then the world was all quivering lights and dancing shadows. Nature was gay and debonnair with her full summer's smile, now she seems to have unfolded her arms to let autumn's chill breath steal over her warm beautiful breast. The sunlight does not brood over the earth as it did then; rather it seems woven into a dainty network that hovers over the distant woods, and through the still clear air, the far-off beaches gleam like jewels of gold and amber. Over all there is that nameless silence that spring and summer with their warm bustling life never know, and the few remaining flowers seem to be dying sorrowfully, while the fallen and falling leaves cast their faint impalpable scent of decay abroad. And now my heavy feet have brought me within sight of the brook, and of a man who stands by its side waiting; and once again the irresistible inclination to take flight, even at this eleventh hour, possesses me; but remembering that if I do shirk my evil task now, I cannot get out of fulfilling it in the future, I walk quickly on, and he, spying my approach, comes forward to greet me.
"My darling," he says, and takes my two bare hands and kisses them; and I look up into his face, without a smile, without a word. . . . but he is very blind, he does not see, does not heed. "You have come to tell me that you will make a happy fellow of me at last?"
But I draw my hands out of his, and hide my face in them shivering.
"Are you sorry, dear?" he asks gently. "Are you afraid? It must seem strange to you to promise yourself to any one—to a stranger; you have always been so fond of your own people; but I will be as careful over you, Nell, as gentle———. You do not doubt that I can make you happy?"
Then, as I do not answer or lift my face, he goes on—"I have waited so long for this hour, Nell, for so many weary, weary years, sometimes I thought it would never come. If any one wants anything as badly as I want you, he rarely gets it; and you know I have never had any one to care for but you—neither mother sister, nor brother, and I have often noticed that when a man centres his whole happiness in one object it is taken from him. That is why I have always so feared, Nell, that some one would come and take you away from me. That was why I hated your going to Luttrell, for I thought all men must love you as I did, and perhaps a stranger would take your fancy. But when you told me yesterday that no one loved you but me, when I knew that my darling had come back to me safely, then, Nell, my heart was at rest, and I knew a perfect happiness, than which earth could give me no better, not if you were my own true wife, love, and bore my name. . . . I believe I thanked God." The reverent, simple voice ceases for a moment. "And now," he says, drawing my hands gently away from my eyes with one hand, while he gathers me to him with the other, "I have my reward; have I not, my darling?"
Ay! he has his reward, as I recoil from his embrace, slip away out of his arms, and stand looking at him with a measureless suffering in my eyes, with a deadly pallor on lips and cheek. A faint dread comes into his face, and dashes the surpassing brightness out, a terrible suspicion grows in his eyes, and dwells there. With that look upon him I can tell him better than I could a moment ago, when his beautiful face was all transfigured with its great happiness.
"I do not love you," I say in a whisper; "but love has come to my heart." . . . And then I cover up my face that I may not see his, and turn away.
For a moment there is a deadly waiting silence; then———
"Some one has stolen her from me!" he cries, in a fierce awakened voice. "God!"—and falls downwards like a dead man on the grass.
He does not speak or move, not even when I go and kneel down by his side and entreat him to answer my voice, to make some sign.
"George, George!" I cry through my shuddering sobs; and then ("for he may be dead," I say to myself in my wretchedness), I lay my hand upon the golden-tressed head that lies so stirlessly on his folded arms.
"Do not touch me," he cries; "do not dare." . . .
Oh! the relief it is to me to hear his hoarse voice.
"I might have borne it yesterday . . . . but not to-day—not to-day . . . the joy I have been hugging to my heart was all a myth—a sham. . . . I was putting myself in his place.". . .
A tremor shakes him; he buries his face deeper in his arms.
"In whose place?" I ask gently. "No one loves me but you, George!"
"No one but me?" he repeats, lifting his haggard face, all blotted and marred with grief and passion. "The man you love does not love you?"
"No," I say, subsiding into a tumbled, miserable heap by his side, while the tears trickle slowly down my pale cheeks. "You love me, George, and he loves somebody else, that is all!"
"Don't cry, darling," he says; "I can't bear it."
Even in this hour of supreme suffering my true, brave lover sets his own bitter grief aside to comfort mine.
"So that is the reason you look so pale and thin? Nell, you are quite sure you love him?"
"Quite—quite sure, George!"
"It is not an idle fancy; you will hold to it?"
"Do you love me?" I ask. "Do you think that you will ever love any one else?"
"You know that I love you; and I am quite certain I shall never love any one else."
"Then, George," I say, piteously, "as you feel for me, so I feel for him, and———"
"I understand," he says; "I know." And a bitter heavy silence falls between us.
"And this man?" he says, waking out of it with a fiery anger that somehow comforts me. Who would not rather see a man swell with rage than bow his head in grief? "Who has worked this misery to you? Who has made you suffer like this? Who has dared?"
"It is not his fault," I say, slowly; "it was all a mistake. George; all my own doing and vanity."
"I don't believe it," he cries, with flashing eyes. "You make love to any one? you let your heart go before it ever was asked for? Never! I have known you long enough, and well enough; and you could not have cared for this man without his having given you good reason."
"There was no reason," I say. "He told me he was in love with some one else. Can anything be plainer?"
"Did he tell you that at first—at the very beginning?"
"Not quite," I say, in a troubled voice; "but he did not know, he could not guess, that I should———"
A burning, shameful blush covers my cheeks, and dries up the salt pricking tears.
"By Heaven! he shall answer for it!" says George, between his teeth; and in his blue eyes is a fixed resolve that makes me tremble. "I will find him out, whoever or wherever he may be, and———"
"My poor fellow," I say, with a faint smile, "are you the one to seek redress for my imaginary wrongs? You are not my brother."
"For once I wish I were," he says, quietly; "I should then have the right to punish the scoundrel who has dared to trifle with you. Nell, won't you tell me about it? We are not lovers now, you know, we are friends, and, dear, you need never fear my pestering you with unwelcome words and attentions: I thought no shame of entreating your love when there was a hope of my winning it, but now that I know how irrevocably it is given to another, and judging your heart by my own, I accept my fate, and will bear it, please God, like a man. So could you not trust me, Nell?"
"I could trust you," I say, very gently, for the tender pity of his voice almost breaks my heart; "but I cannot tell you, George, I have never spoken to any one living of it save you, and more than I have told you I shall never tell."
We have risen, and are now standing by the brook that leaps, and chatters, and froths, and fusses as it goes, pausing not a moment to look at the old, old sight of a miserable man and girl who have wrecked their lives for love.
"Do not suppose that I do not care," I say, passionately; "do not suppose that I do not know, George."
"Yes, yes," he says; "but you must not fret about me. Think of yourself, my poor little darling. If I could only bear it for you!"
He breaks off, tries to speak again—fails; then, without a word or sign, goes quickly away, and I stand still looking after him with aching, burning eyes, and the heaviest heart woman ever had. Have I passed the pure gold by to covet the baser metal? Could Paul Vasher ever love a woman as purely, as truly, and as unselfishly as George loves me? There is a stronger, more selfish grit about Paul; he will have his own way, and no one shall baulk him of it; he will be master, and no one shall say him nay. He will assure his own happiness first, that of the woman he loves after; and while George would look up to his idol, Paul would look down.
George is quite out of sight now, and with weary steps I go to the stile that divides the meadow from the field of rye, and lean over it, thinking dully of that day two months ago, when I made my wreath and sent George away cross, and ran against Paul Vasher in the midst of the ripe grain.
"History repeats itself," I say, half aloud, as I watch those cunning workmen—the ants, scurrying about at the base of the primitive stone stile; "but only up to a certain point, and there it always fails. Now there is no Paul to come over the field to-day; he is probably shooting with the rest at Luttrell. I shall never have a chance of seeing him here either, for after to-day I will not come this way."
I lift my eyes, and see Paul Vasher coming across the field of rye to meet me. I do not speak or stir; the hour has come, and must be met; and somehow, perhaps it is because my heart is so filled with George's misery, as to leave no room for pity of my own, I feel a kind of indifference. "Nothing matters much now," I say to myself, as Paul stands before me. He makes me no greeting, nor do I him; he only looks into my pale, tear-stained face with a quick triumphant gladness that vaguely surprises me. Why should he look so eager and happy when his true love is nowhere near?
"I have come to claim the fulfilment of your promise," he says; then as I lift my eyes to his, he catches and holds them fast to his; and, lo! my listlessness falls from me like a garment, and a living writhing pain stirs and leaps in my dull heart, and I know that the old glamour is upon me, that all the world has faded away, and that in all my past, present, and future, naught has place save the dark beloved face that is looking so intently into mine.
"You never broke your word yet," he says, and his hands tightened their hold upon mine. "You will keep your promise, Nell."
With his eyes upon mine, with the resistless power he ever wielded over me compelling me, I open my lips to speak the truth as before my God . . . then I tear my hands out of his, my eyes from his.
"I cannot," I say, with a bitter cry, "oh, I cannot!"
"Is it Paul?" he asks, folding his arms about me, and pressing my head down against his breast; "tell me, sweetheart."
"Tell me her name," I ask, in a whisper; "tell me quick."
"Nell. Do you understand now?"
As he lifts my arms and lays them about his neck, as he bends his dark face and seeks my lips with all the unsated hunger of the first kiss, I turn my head quickly away and hide it on his breast. Shall I receive the kisses of this new lover while the words uttered by the old one have scarcely ceased to echo in my ears?
"What is this?" asks Paul, holding me away from him to look keenly into my face: "after all, do you not love me, child? I should have waited for an answer to my question. Do you love me, my sweetheart, my flower?" he asks, looking into my face with a passion of tenderness.
"Love you?" I answer, with a long, long sigh. "What is love? But let me go now, Mr. Vasher; let me go!"
"Let you go?" he says, smoothing my hair back from my face, now that I have just got my little witch? No! I will keep you safe enough, love, never fear!"
"But you do not know," I say, anxiously; "you do not understand; it is so quick, so soon."
"Soon! and you have kept me at arm's length for more than a month! Ah! child, if you had known the restraint I had to put upon myself over and over again. I almost broke down."
"Did you love me all that time?" I ask, softly. "Are you sure you did?"
"Loved you!" he says; "I think I have loved you ever since the Silverbridge days. I know I have loved you ever since the day I met you in yonder field. I never was so sorry to say good-bye to any one as when I said it to you under the porch at the Manor House, and all the while I was getting through that confounded business in town, I was fidgetting to get back to Silverbridge, and if it had not been for the absurdity of the thing, I should have come back just to get an hour's glimpse of you. Then I was obliged to go to the Luttrells, never dreaming they were relations of yours, and there I found you; and, sweet, I had not known you a week before I lost my head completely. Living as quietly as you did I never supposed for a moment that you could have had a lover; but very early in the day, from one or two chance remarks of yours, I gathered that you had, and never did a man chafe more under the knowledge than I. You would neither deny nor corroborate anything, and sometimes I felt certain you were beginning to care for me, sometimes, I believe, you were hankering after that man at Silverbridge, and at last———"
"You told stories," I say, laughing gently; "you told me you were in love with somebody."
"So I was."
"And that you would show her to me."
"So I will."
"And your behaviour was inexcusable."
"I know it; but why, you little minx, did you rout me so utterly that morning in the garden? I was telling you my love story full sail, on the point of asking you if you would try and love me, when out you tumbled a letter from your precious lover, with whom you told me, with inimitable sang froid, you corresponded. And I had fondly imagined (after getting over the first unpleasant shock of your having a lover at all), that you cared nothing about him, flouted his attentions, and would none of them! In self-defence I invented a fiction, and even then, so stubborn were you, madam, I could not gather from your face any more than that you were disturbed, though whether on his account or mine, I could not for the life of me tell. I caught you by a promise, Nell, and made up my mind that here, where we first met, I would ask you a plain question, receive a plain answer."
"It is a plain answer," I say ruefully; "for your sake I wish it were a prettier one!"
"Little sweetheart!" he says, devouring my face with his eyes, "do you remember how I told you years and years ago to pray that you might never grow up good-looking? Well, I am glad you did not thus pray, for I could not bear to lose a single one, not the very smallest, of your charms—your lovely hair, your sweet eyes, and sweeter lips. Nell, what do you suppose I am made of?"
"Flesh and blood, I suppose," I answer, giving him a soft pinch.
"Well, then, I can't stand this; do you know that we have been here more than ten minutes, and that I have not had a single kiss; do you think I am so patient?"
"Not to-day, Paul," I say trembling, "some day perhaps, or to-morrow, but not to-day, I cannot because of—of him, you know."
"Him? there should be only one man in the world to you now, Nell."
George Tempest, then," I say, turning crimson; "Lubin, you know."
"What of him?" asks Paul in surprise; "surely you are not bothering your head about him? Poor devil! he must be cut up at losing a little pet like you; but it is not your fault, you can't help it. I have a notion"—he goes on, smoothing my hair with his hand—"that this admirer of yours is a great, awkward, country-looking fellow, who does not know what to do with his arms and legs; in short, just what I first called him to you, a Lubin?"
"Perhaps you will see him some day," I answer, smiling a little to myself at Paul's notion of George; it must be a source of small wonder, then, that I fell in love with himself. "Paul," I say gently, "do you know why I have been fretting to-day? do you know why I have been crying so bitterly?"
"Well," he says, looking down on me with a whimsical air of pride and amusement, "I thought that you might have been thinking a little bit about me, perhaps?"
"No, no," I answer, smiling rather sadly, "it was not of you I was thinking just then, but of Mr. Tempest, who had scarcely left me when you came; he was so wretched, and it seemed so soon, so indecently soon, for you to make love to me."
"And you care so much as that?" he asks, with a sudden jealousy in his voice that startles me; "you could be sorry for him; could think of him at such a time as this? Heaven knows I had no other woman in my thoughts when I told you that I loved you!"
"Yes, I can," I answer steadily; "and I should not be worthy of your love if I could fling away all memory of his great misery one moment to lose myself in happiness with another lover the next."
"Did you ever care for that man?" he asks coldly, but he does not loose me out of his arms. "Did you ever have the smallest fancy for him?”
"Never!" I answer gravely; "if I had I should be with him, not you, at the present moment, should I not?"
He looks deeply into my eyes, and what he reads there must satisfy him, for he murmurs fond, mad love words over my drooped head, calls me his queen, his heart's delight, his idol.
"Papa may come this way," I say nervously; "he does not often, but he might; let us go and sit down in my parlour."
We cross the bare brown field, and reach my little green chamber, where a big log of wood affords us a seat, and sit down side by side.
"And now," he says, "I am going to show you my little girl;" and out of his breast-pocket he brings a velvet case, touches a spring, the lid flies back, and there, looking out at us from under a veil of hair and a wreath of poppies, is—me!
"How did you get it?" I ask, staring hard at it. (Surely, surely, I never was so pretty as that!)
"I asked an artist who was at the Luttrells' ball, to study your face and paint you with loose hair, and here it is."
(So it was my face that I left Paul to muse over that day on the terrace.)
"I have kissed this painted thing very often," he says, drawing me gently to his breast; "now the real lips are my own, do you deny them to me, Nell? I could take a hundred if I would, but I am too proud to do that; have you not one to give me, love?"
For a moment I tremble and hesitate; it is so soon, so terribly soon; if that other only knew! then, for my duty is to this my lord, I lift my lips to his, and as he folds me in his arms, he kisses me as I kiss him for the first time. Across that perfect kiss, than which the earth can give me no such other, why does a picture rise up before me, of a man and woman standing in the moonlight, wishing each other a passionate, last good-bye?
"If you were not so strong," I say, stroking his hand with my slim fingers, "I would keep you in such order, banish you to such a distance; you should sue so meekly for ever such a little favour!"
"If you were like that," he says, kissing me passionately on cheek and brow, and eyes and lips, (verily, one salute leads to a great many more!) "you would never have me at your feet. It is the soft, adorable, bewitching little creatures like you who get into a man's heart and stop there, though, Heaven knows! you kept me at a distance long enough."
"I suffered for it enough!" I say, sighing. "Oh! I shall always consider you treated me very badly! It is a wonder my hair is not grey with all the misery I have had."
"My sweetheart!" he says.
Here there is a long and ridiculous pause, that people may fill up as they please.
"Do you know that I felt glad sometimes to see you looking sad? I thought you were fretting after Lubin; and I said to myself, 'Now she will know a little of what I am enduring.'"
Yes, he loves differently to George, not half as well; and I worship the very ground Paul walks on, and I esteem and like George as a brother.
It grows late, time has passed with such hurrying swiftness; through the dark stems of the trees before us shows the pale blue-green of the evening sky, cold and pure and beautiful exceedingly. Nature is robing herself in her cool twilight garment of silver grey, shrouding the trees and fields softly, as though preparing them for sleep; the sun has gone down, leaving a rack of amber and crimson clouds behind him, the leaves rustle gently in the autumn wind, that wanders over the face of the land.
"I must go home now," I say, springing up. "But, Paul, Paul—papa!"
"What of him?" asks my lover, pinching my cheek.
"He is furious at the notion of any of his daughters thinking of such a thing as being married."
"And he married himself, and had twelve children," says Paul, "which points the moral. Well, I am going to call on him to-morrow, and I shall tell him that you and I———"
"Do not!" I say, with much concern. "He would first of all kick you, or try to," I add, mentally measuring Paul's stalwart proportions; "then he would lock me up, and as he is going away in a fortnight, for some months, it would be a serious business, for no one would dare to let me out."
"Poor little woman!" he says; "they shall not treat her like that while I am anywhere near!"
"If you would not mind waiting," I say, wistfully; "if you would not say anything till he comes back, (it would not be very deceitful, would it?) we could have such a glorious time while he is away! I have been looking forward to such a dull one, too," I add, thoughtfully; "but now I shall be able to get into heaps of mischief."
"And do you think I am going to wait for you all that time, child?" he asks; are you not afraid that my patience will wear out, and that I shall fall in love with somebody else?"
"No!" I answer saucily; "I am not in the least afraid! Will you wait, Paul?'
"He must not be away too long," says Paul, significantly, "or he won't find his daughter Nell waiting for him when he gets back. For your sake, though, what would I not do for your sweet sake. I will not speak to him about our marriage before he goes."
"Our marriage!" how sweet the words sound! As I muse on their goodness, like a chime of jangled silver bells sweep Silvia's words across my memory, "You will never be Paul Vasher's wife—never!"
Ay! but I am Paul Vasher's love, and that is what you are not, never will be, Silvia. Your wild words are very far away, very puerile and empty to me, as I stand with my lover's arms around me; harm can be worked between two lovers apart, and misunderstanding each other, but what between two who are together in the first flush of acknowledged love, and without a shadow between them?
We take a long while to make our adieux to our parlour, and to cross the field, but now we are standing in the meadow, arguing; he wants to see me safely in at the home gates, I want him to go back to The Towers, lest we meet any one. Where we now stand is perfectly retired, save in harvest-time or seed-time people rarely come this way, but the meadow once left, there is a chance of seeing anybody.
As we stand close together in the gloaming, talking our half-earnest, half-jesting nonsense, out of the grey shadow a man's figure emerges, and comes slowly towards us—George Tempest! He is looking down and walking heavily, with unstrung limbs and bent head he does not see us until he almost brushes our garments, then he lifts his eyes, and oh heavens! I could cry aloud at the dull misery of their regard—the set, fixed stupor of his face, with not a glint of hope or peace or every-day indifference in it—and my face is radiant with my new found joy.
At first, although we are in his path, he does not seem to see us, and is about to pass on, when some gleam of consciousness comes across his face, his ordinary bearing comes back to him, his eyes brighten.
"George!" I say, stretching out my hand involuntarily; "George!"
He takes it as gently as though it were a flower.
"Is that you, Nell?" he asks, in his natural voice; and then he looks at Paul, and, by some subtle intuition, he knows: I feel it in the sudden shock that passes from his hand to mine.
"You have not introduced me to your friend," he says.
Stumblingly I go through the form of introduction between the man I love and the man who loves me, then, I do not know how it comes to pass, we go on, and George passes on his way alone.
It is Paul who speaks first.
"And that is the man who loved you, Nell!" he says, slowly, "whom I have sneered at, pitied—I! Heavens, that I should dare! Sweetheart, are you sure that you love me—not him? He is noble, unselfish, grand, as I never was, never could be. It is not too late now; do you repent of the bad bargain you have made?"
"I love you," I answer, clasping my arms, of my own free will, about his neck; "I love you, my darling; what is any man in the world to me but a shadow, save you?"
"What is any woman on earth, what was one ever?" he asks, peering into my face through the closing darkness, "compared with what you are to me, my love, my idol, my wife?"