"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."
Greta"s eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.
"Impossible--you cannot mean it," she said with her customary impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh"s face, and misread what she saw there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."
"Do you then love him?"
Greta started.
"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother, Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."
She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some distracting exercise.
Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher.
He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness--what man of brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse--true! That moment of temptation threatened painful consequences--still true! What then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever?
Tut!--all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of n.o.ble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta"s beautiful countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:
"Your brother--yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished another name?"
The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:
"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"
"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.
"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had seen it--before you had realized it."
The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.
"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her, "what is the love that scarcely knows itself?--that is the love with which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid pa.s.sion of a man of no mind?--that is the love which he offers you. What is your love for him, or his for you?--what is it, can it be? Love is not love unless it is the love of true minds. That was said long ago, Greta, and how true it is!" He went on quickly, in a tone of dull irritation: "All other love is no better than l.u.s.t. Greta, I understand you. It is not for a rude man like my brother to do so." Then in an eager voice he said: "Dearest, I bring you a love undreamed of among these country boors."
"Country boors!" she repeated in a half-stifled whisper.
He did not hear her. His vehement eyes swam, and he was dizzy.
"Greta, dearest, I said there has been little in my life to sweeten it.
Yet I am a man made to love and to be loved. My love for you has been mute for months; but it can be mute no longer. Perhaps I have had my own impediment, apart from our love for Paul. But that is all over now."
His cheeks quivered, his lips trembled, his voice swelled, his nervous fingers were riveted to his palm. He approached her and took her hand.
She seemed to be benumbed by strong feeling. She had stood as one transfixed, a slow paralysis of surprise laying hold of her faculties.
But at his touch her senses regained their mastery. She flung away his hand. Her breast heaved. In a voice charged with indignation, she said:
"So this is what you mean! I understand you at last!"
Huge Ritson fell back a pace.
"Greta, hear me--hear me again!"
But she had found her voice indeed.
"Sir, you have outraged your brother"s heart as surely as if at this moment I had been your brother"s wife!"
"Greta, think before you speak--think, I implore you!"
"I have thought! I have thought of you as your sister might think, and spoken to you as my brother. Now I know how mean of soul you are!"
Hugh broke in pa.s.sionately:
"For G.o.d"s sake, stop! I am an unforgiving man."
His nostrils quivered, every nerve vibrated.
"Love? You never loved. If you knew what the word means you would die of shame where you stand this instant."
Hugh lost all control.
"I bid you beware!" he said in wrath and dismay.
"And I bid you be silent!" said Greta, with an eloquent uplifting of the hand. "You offer your love to a pledged woman. It is only base love that is basely offered. It is bad coin, sir, and goes back dishonored."
Hugh Ritson regained some self-command. The contractions were deep about his forehead, but he answered in an imperturbable voice:
"You shall never marry my brother!"
"I will--G.o.d willing!"
"Then you shall marry him to your lifelong horror and disgrace."
"That shall be as Heaven may order."
"A boor--a hulking brute--a bas--"
"Enough! I would rather marry a plowboy than such a gentleman as you!"
Face to face, eye to eye, with panting breath and scornful looks, there they stood for one moment. Then Greta swung about and walked down the lonnin.
Hugh Ritson"s natural manner returned instantly. He looked after her without the change of a feature, and then turned quietly into the house.
CHAPTER VI.
There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch.
It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun the conversation with old Allan Ritson that had been interrupted by the announcement of the Laird Fisher. Half of the window was thrown up, and the landscape framed by the sash lay still as a picture. The sun that had pa.s.sed over Grisedale sent a deep glow from behind, and the woods beneath took a restful tone. Only the mountain-head was white where it towered into the sky and the silence.
Mrs. Ritson entered and sat down. Her manner was meek almost to abjectness. She was elderly, but her face bore traces of the beauty she had enjoyed in youth. The lines had grown deep in it since then, and now the sadness of its expression was permanent. She wore an old-fashioned lavender gown, and there was a white silk scarf about her neck. Her voice was low and tremulous, yet eager, as if it were always questioning.