"Why should I?" she said simply. "We"ve always been poor--at least, nearly since I can remember; and we have always been happy, d.i.c.k and I.
Now, it would not have been so nice if you had been very rich."
"Why not?" he asked, lifting a tress of her hair to his lips.
She thought for a moment.
"Oh, don"t you see? I should have felt that you had been foolish to--to love me----" There was an interlude. Should he ever grow tired of kissing her? he asked himself. "And I should have been afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Well, that you would be ashamed of me when you took me into the society of fashionable people, and----Oh, I am very glad that you are not rich!
That sounds unkind, I am afraid."
"Nell," he said solemnly, "I have long suspected that you were an angel masquerading as a mere woman, but I am now convinced of it."
She laughed, and softly rubbed her cheek against his arm.
"And I have long suspected that you were a rich man and a "somebody"
masquerading as a poor one, and I am delighted to hear that I was mistaken."
He started at the first words of her retort, but breathed a sigh of relief as she concluded.
"Poor or rich, I love you, Nell," he said, with a seriousness which was almost solemn, "and I will do my level best to make you happy. When you are my wife----"
The blood rushed to her face, and her head dropped.
"That will be a long time hence," she whispered.
"No, no!" he said quickly, pa.s.sionately. "I couldn"t wait very long, Nell. But when you are my wife, I will try to prove to you that poor people can be happy. We shall just have enough to set up a house in some foreign land."
She looked up at him gravely.
"And leave mamma and--d.i.c.k? Yes?"
The acquiescence touched him.
"You won"t mind, dearest--you won"t mind leaving England?"
She shook her head.
"How cold and cruel I have become," she said, as if she were communing with herself. "But I do not care; I feel as if I could leave any one--go anywhere--if--if--I were with you!"
She moved, so that she knelt beside him, and her small brown hands were palm downward on his breast; her eyes shone like stars with the light of a perfect love glowing in them; her sweet lips quivered, as, with all a young girl"s abandonment to her first pa.s.sion, she breathed:
"Do you think I care whether you are poor or rich? I love you! Do you think I care whether you are handsome or ugly? It is you I love. Do you think I care where I go, so that you take me with you? I could not live without you. I would rather wander through the world, in rags, and starving, cold, and hungry, than--than marry a king and live in a palace! I only want you, you, you! I have wanted you since--since that first day--do you remember? I--turn your eyes away, don"t look at me; I am so ashamed!--I came down to you that night--the first night! You were calling for water, and I--I raised you on my arm, and--and oh! I was so happy! I did not know, guess, why; but I know now. I--I must have loved you even then!"
She hid her eyes on his arm, and he kissed her hair reverently.
"And every day I--I grew to love you more. I was only happy when I was with you. I wondered why. But I know now! And you were always so kind and gentle with me; so unlike any other man I had met--the vicar, Doctor Spence--and I used to like to listen to you; and--and when you touched me something ran through me, something filled me with gladness."
She paused for breath, her eyes fixed on his face, as if she were not seeing him, but the past, and her own self moving and being in that past.
"And then you went, and all the happiness, all the gladness, seemed to go, and--bend lower--I--I can only whisper it--the night you went I flung myself on the bed and--and cried."
"My Nell, my dearest!" was all he could say.
"I cried because it seemed to me that my life had come to an end; that never, so long as I should live, should I know one moment of happiness again. It was as if all the light had gone out of the sky, as if the sun had turned cold--ah! you don"t know!"
"Do I not, dearest?"
"And then, when I saw you to-day, all the light and warmth came rushing back, and I knew that it was you who were my light, my sun, and that without you I was not living, but only a shadow and a mockery of life."
Her hands fell from his breast, her head sank upon his knees, she sobbed in the abandonment of her pa.s.sion.
And the man was awed by it, and almost as white as herself. He gathered her in his strong arms and murmured pa.s.sionate words of love and grat.i.tude and devotion.
"Nell, Nell, my Nell! G.o.d make me more worthy of your love!" he said brokenly, hoa.r.s.ely.
She raised her head from his knees and offered him--of her own free will--her sweet lips, and then clung to him with a half-tearful, maidenly shame.
"Let me go!" she said.
The light that never was on earth or sky beamed on the _Annie Laurie_ as it skimmed toward the jetty.
Nell sat in the stern, and Drake lay at her feet, his arms round her, his face upturned to hers.
G.o.d knows he was grateful for her love. G.o.d also knows how unworthy he felt. This love is such a terrible thing. A maiden goes through the ways of life, in maiden meditation fancy free, pausing beside the brook to pluck the flowers which grow on its bank, and thinking of nothing but the simple girlish things which pertain to maidenhood. Then suddenly a shadow falls across her path. It is the shadow of the Man, and the love which shall raise her to heaven or drag her down to the nethermost h.e.l.l.
A glance, a word, and her fate is decided; before her stretch the long years of joy or misery.
And, alas! she has no choice! Love is lord of all, of our lives, of our fate, and none can say him nay. No one of us can elect to love a little wisely, or unwisely and too well.
But there was no doubt, no misgiving, in Nell"s mind that night. She had given herself to this man who had fallen at her feet in Shorne Mills, and she had given herself fully and unreservedly. His very presence was a joy to her. It was a subtle delight to reach out her hand and touch him, though with the tips of her fingers. The gates of paradise had opened and she had entered in.
How short the hour seemed during which they had sailed toward the jetty!
She breathed a sigh, which Drake echoed.
"Let me lift you out," he pleaded. "I want to feel you in my arms--once more to-night!"
She surrendered herself, and, for a moment, her head sank on his shoulder.
They walked up the hill almost in silence; but every now and then his hand sought hers, and not in vain.
She looked up at the starlit sky in a kind of wondering amazement. Was it she?--was it he?--were they really betrothed? Did he really love her?
Oh, how wonderful--wonderful it was! And they said there was no real happiness in this world.
She could have laughed with the scorn of her full, complete joy!