"It cannot be," she said.
"Why not?" he asked sharply.
Elfride was distressed to find him in so stern a mood, and she trembled.
In a confusion of ideas, probably not intending a wilful prevarication, she answered hurriedly--
"If he"s dead, how can you meet him?"
"Is he dead? Oh, that"s different altogether!" said Knight, immensely relieved. "But, let me see--what did you say about that tomb and him?"
"That"s his tomb," she continued faintly.
"What! was he who lies buried there the man who was your lover?" Knight asked in a distinct voice.
"Yes; and I didn"t love him or encourage him."
"But you let him kiss you--you said so, you know, Elfride."
She made no reply.
"Why," said Knight, recollecting circ.u.mstances by degrees, "you surely said you were in some degree engaged to him--and of course you were if he kissed you. And now you say you never encouraged him. And I have been fancying you said--I am almost sure you did--that you were sitting with him ON that tomb. Good G.o.d!" he cried, suddenly starting up in anger, "are you telling me untruths? Why should you play with me like this?
I"ll have the right of it. Elfride, we shall never be happy! There"s a blight upon us, or me, or you, and it must be cleared off before we marry." Knight moved away impetuously as if to leave her.
She jumped up and clutched his arm
"Don"t go, Harry--don"t!
"Tell me, then," said Knight sternly. "And remember this, no more fibs, or, upon my soul, I shall hate you. Heavens! that I should come to this, to be made a fool of by a girl"s untruths----"
"Don"t, don"t treat me so cruelly! O Harry, Harry, have pity, and withdraw those dreadful words! I am truthful by nature--I am--and I don"t know how I came to make you misunderstand! But I was frightened!"
She quivered so in her perturbation that she shook him with her {Note: sentence incomplete in text.}
"Did you say you were sitting on that tomb?" he asked moodily.
"Yes; and it was true."
"Then how, in the name of Heaven, can a man sit upon his own tomb?"
"That was another man. Forgive me, Harry, won"t you?"
"What, a lover in the tomb and a lover on it?"
"Oh--Oh--yes!"
"Then there were two before me?
"I--suppose so."
"Now, don"t be a silly woman with your supposing--I hate all that," said Knight contemptuously almost. "Well, we learn strange things. I don"t know what I might have done--no man can say into what shape circ.u.mstances may warp him--but I hardly think I should have had the conscience to accept the favours of a new lover whilst sitting over the poor remains of the old one; upon my soul, I don"t." Knight, in moody meditation, continued looking towards the tomb, which stood staring them in the face like an avenging ghost.
"But you wrong me--Oh, so grievously!" she cried. "I did not meditate any such thing: believe me, Harry, I did not. It only happened so--quite of itself."
"Well, I suppose you didn"t INTEND such a thing," he said. "n.o.body ever does," he sadly continued.
"And him in the grave I never once loved."
"I suppose the second lover and you, as you sat there, vowed to be faithful to each other for ever?"
Elfride only replied by quick heavy breaths, showing she was on the brink of a sob.
"You don"t choose to be anything but reserved, then?" he said imperatively.
"Of course we did," she responded.
""Of course!" You seem to treat the subject very lightly?"
"It is past, and is nothing to us now."
"Elfride, it is a nothing which, though it may make a careless man laugh, cannot but make a genuine one grieve. It is a very gnawing pain.
Tell me straight through--all of it."
"Never. O Harry! how can you expect it when so little of it makes you so harsh with me?"
"Now, Elfride, listen to this. You know that what you have told only jars the subtler fancies in one, after all. The feeling I have about it would be called, and is, mere sentimentality; and I don"t want you to suppose that an ordinary previous engagement of a straightforward kind would make any practical difference in my love, or my wish to make you my wife. But you seem to have more to tell, and that"s where the wrong is. Is there more?"
"Not much more," she wearily answered.
Knight preserved a grave silence for a minute. ""Not much more,"" he said at last. "I should think not, indeed!" His voice a.s.sumed a low and steady pitch. "Elfride, you must not mind my saying a strange-sounding thing, for say it I shall. It is this: that if there WERE much more to add to an account which already includes all the particulars that a broken marriage engagement could possibly include with propriety, it must be some exceptional thing which might make it impossible for me or any one else to love you and marry you."
Knight"s disturbed mood led him much further than he would have gone in a quieter moment. And, even as it was, had she been a.s.sertive to any degree he would not have been so peremptory; and had she been a stronger character--more practical and less imaginative--she would have made more use of her position in his heart to influence him. But the confiding tenderness which had won him is ever accompanied by a sort of self-committal to the stream of events, leading every such woman to trust more to the kindness of fate for good results than to any argument of her own.
"Well, well," he murmured cynically; "I won"t say it is your fault: it is my ill-luck, I suppose. I had no real right to question you--everybody would say it was presuming. But when we have misunderstood, we feel injured by the subject of our misunderstanding.
You never said you had had n.o.body else here making love to you, so why should I blame you? Elfride, I beg your pardon."
"No, no! I would rather have your anger than that cool aggrieved politeness. Do drop that, Harry! Why should you inflict that upon me? It reduces me to the level of a mere acquaintance."
"You do that with me. Why not confidence for confidence?"
"Yes; but I didn"t ask you a single question with regard to your past: I didn"t wish to know about it. All I cared for was that, wherever you came from, whatever you had done, whoever you had loved, you were mine at last. Harry, if originally you had known I had loved, would you never have cared for me?"
"I won"t quite say that. Though I own that the idea of your inexperienced state had a great charm for me. But I think this: that if I had known there was any phase of your past love you would refuse to reveal if I asked to know it, I should never have loved you."
Elfride sobbed bitterly. "Am I such a--mere characterless toy--as to have no attrac--tion in me, apart from--freshness? Haven"t I brains?
You said--I was clever and ingenious in my thoughts, and--isn"t that anything? Have I not some beauty? I think I have a little--and I know I have--yes, I do! You have praised my voice, and my manner, and my accomplishments. Yet all these together are so much rubbish because I--accidentally saw a man before you!"
"Oh, come, Elfride. "Accidentally saw a man" is very cool. You loved him, remember."
--"And loved him a little!"