"_Must_ we be separated any more, Rachel? Can"t we be married now--this week--to-morrow--and go away from everybody quietly? It seems like tempting Providence to lose sight of one another again--to lose one hour more than we can help of what we have been kept out of all this time."
"It does--it does," a.s.sented Rachel. "But I promised Aunt Elizabeth that I would be a widow for a year."
"You were a widow for me--how many years?"
"I know, Roden, I know. I do not do it willingly. But other people--other things--have to be considered."
"Six months more! Child, no one has any right to demand such an enormous sacrifice of us. Who knows how long we may live to be together as we want to be together? Can we afford to throw away six months on the top of six years for the sake of mere sham propriety, knowing the worth of every hour as we do?"
"Roden," said Rachel gently, after a pause, "it shall be just as you like. If you think we ought not to wait, we will not. I can explain to Aunt Elizabeth."
And then he recognised his responsibilities.
"No," he said, "I think perhaps we had better wait--though there _is_ no sense or justice in it. We"ll pay Mrs. Grundy the heaviest price that she has swindled honest people of for many a day, and then we"ll take it out with interest. But you will do something for me in the meantime?"
"There is nothing I could do for you that I should not want to do for myself, Roden."
"You won"t go quite away, will you? You"ll stay here till I have to leave, and then you"ll come and stay a long while with Lily? You"ll let me have sight of you, and keep watch over you, until the waiting time is up?" There was no answer required for this question. What they could do for one another they would, as both well knew. He held her tightly in his arms, covering half her face with his great moustache. "And when the time is up we will not wait one hour--not one," he said, with sudden, strong pa.s.sion. "That very day, Rachel, I shall take you away to Queensland, where n.o.body can reach us and nothing can interfere with us.
When at last I _do_ get you, I will have you--for a little while at all events--absolutely and wholly to myself."
And Rachel prayed that she might be permitted to live until that "little while" should come.
It seemed, in this moment of antic.i.p.ation, something that it would be presumptuous for a mortal woman to hope for, much less to expect.
And should Love, when all is said and done, be the ruler and lord of all--supreme arbiter of the destinies of purblind creatures, not one in ten, perhaps not one in fifty, of whom have the faculty to see him and know him as he is?
Should the pa.s.sion of wayward girls defy the wisdom and wishes of parents and guardians, who have learned in long years of costly experience something of the potentialities of this many-sided life?
Should all risks of poverty and social ignominy, with their long train of trials and temptations, involving the welfare of innocent relatives and unborn children, be dared in an irrevocable moment of enthusiasm for one"s faith in the eternal fidelity of any man or woman?
Like many other questions that trouble us in this world, wherein nothing seems quite right and nothing altogether wrong, we are constrained to leave it for the history of future ages, that we shall never see, to answer.
Knowing only what we know, we must not say "yes"--we cannot say "no." We have not sufficient light for any such generalities.
But when one finds this unique treasure of human life, to whom it is, with respect to his tangible earthly possessions, what the pearl of great price was to the merchantman of Scripture, there seems no better thing for him to do than to sell all that he has to buy it, so long as he sells only what is absolutely his own, and none of the rights and privileges that belong to other people.
THE END.