"No; nothing."
"I wish we could be friends, Mary. I wish I could know your secret.
You have a secret."
"No," she said boldly.
"Is there nothing?"
"What should there be, Mr. Morton!"
"Tell me why you were crying."
"I was not crying. Just a tear is not crying. Sometimes one does get melancholy. One can"t cry when there is any one to look, and so one does it alone. I"d have been laughing if I knew that you were coming."
"Come round by the kennels. You can get over the wall;--can"t you?"
"Oh yes."
"And we"ll go down the old orchard, and get out by the corner of the park fence." Then he walked and she followed him, hardly keeping close by his side, and thinking as she went how foolish she had been not to have avoided the perils and fresh troubles of such a walk. When he was helping her over the wall he held her hands for a moment and she was aware of unusual pressure. It was the pressure of love,--or of that pretence of love which young men, and perhaps old men, sometimes permit themselves to affect. In an ordinary way Mary would have thought as little of it as another girl. She might feel dislike to the man, but the affair would be too light for resentment.
With this man it was different. He certainly was not justified in making the slightest expression of fact.i.tious affection. He at any rate should have felt himself bound to abstain from any touch of peculiar tenderness. She would not say a word. She would not even look at him with angry eyes. But she twitched both her hands away from him as she sprang to the ground. Then there was a pa.s.sage across the orchard,--not more than a hundred yards, and after that a stile.
At the stile she insisted on using her own hand for the custody of her dress. She would not even touch his outstretched arm. "You are very independent," he said.
"I have to be so."
"I cannot make you out, Mary. I wonder whether there is still anything rankling in your bosom against me."
"Oh dear no. What should rankle with me?"
"What indeed;--unless you resent my--regard."
"I am not so rich in friends as to do that, Mr. Morton."
"I don"t suppose there can be many people who have the same sort of feeling for you that I have."
"There are not many who have known me so long, certainly."
"You have some friend, I know," he said.
"More than one I hope."
"Some special friend. Who is he, Mary?"
"I don"t know what you mean, Mr. Morton." She then thought that he was still alluding to Lawrence Twentyman.
"Tell me, Mary."
"What am I to tell you?"
"Your father says that there is some one."
"Papa!"
"Yes;--your father."
Then she remembered it all;--how she had been driven into a half confession to her father. She could not say there was n.o.body. She certainly could not say who that some one was. She could not be silent, for by silence she would be confessing a pa.s.sion for some other man,--a pa.s.sion which certainly had no existence. "I don"t know why papa should talk about me," she said, "and I certainly don"t know why you should repeat what he said."
"But there is some one?" She clenched her fist, and hit out at the air with her parasol, and knit her brows as she looked up at him with a glance of fire in her eye which he had never seen there before.
"Believe me, Mary," he said;--"if ever a girl had a sincere friend, you have one in me. I would not tease you by impertinence in such a matter. I will be as faithful to you as the sun. Do you love any one?"
"Yes," she said turning round at him with ferocity and shouting out her answer as she pressed on.
"Who is he, Mary?"
"What right have you to ask me? What right can any one have? Even your aunt would not press me as you are doing."
"My aunt could not have the same interest. Who is he, Mary?"
"I will not tell you."
He paused a few moments and walked on a step or two before he spoke again. "I would it were I," he said.
"What!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"I would it were I," he repeated.
One glance of her eye stole itself round into his face, and then her face was turned quickly to the ground. Her parasol which had been raised drooped listless from her hand. All unconsciously she hastened her steps and became aware that the tears were streaming from her eyes. For a moment or two it seemed to her that all was still hopeless. If he had no more to say than that, certainly she had not a word. He had made her no tender of his love. He had not told her that in very truth she was his chosen one. After all she was not sure that she understood the meaning of those words "I would it were I." But the tears were coming so quick that she could see nothing of the things around her, and she did not dare even to put her hand up to her eyes. If he wanted her love,--if it was possible that he really wished for it,--why did he not ask for it? She felt his footsteps close to hers, and she was tempted to walk on quicker even than before. Then there came the fingers of a hand round her waist, stealing gradually on till she felt the pressure of his body on her shoulders. She put her hand up weakly, to push back the intruding fingers,--only to leave it tight in his grasp. Then,--then was the first moment in which she realized the truth. After all he did love her. Surely he would not hold her there unless he meant her to know that he loved her. "Mary," he said. To speak was impossible, but she turned round and looked at him with imploring eyes. "Mary,--say that you will be my wife."
CHAPTER XVII.
"MY OWN, OWN HUSBAND."
Yes;--it had come at last. As one may imagine to be the certainty of paradise to the doubting, fearful, all but despairing soul when it has pa.s.sed through the gates of death and found in new worlds a reality of a.s.sured bliss, so was the a.s.surance to her, conveyed by that simple request, "Mary, say that you will be my wife." It did not seem to her that any answer was necessary. Will it be required that the spirit shall a.s.sent to its entrance into Elysium? Was there room for doubt? He would never go back from his word now. He would not have spoken the word had he not been quite, quite certain. And he had loved her all that time,--when she was so hard to him! It must have been so. He had loved her, this bright one, even when he thought that she was to be given to that clay-bound rustic lover! Perhaps that was the sweetest of it all, though in draining the sweet draught she had to accuse herself of hardness, blindness and injustice.
Could it be real? Was it true that she had her foot firmly placed in Paradise? He was there, close to her, with his arm still round her, and her fingers grasped within his. The word wife was still in her ears,--surely the sweetest word in all the language! What protestation of love could have been so eloquent as that question?
"Will you be my wife?" No true man, she thought, ever ought to ask the question in any other form. But her eyes were still full of tears, and as she went she knew not where she was going. She had forgotten all her surroundings, being only aware that he was with her, and that no other eyes were on them.
Then there was another stile on reaching which he withdrew his arm and stood facing her with his back leaning against it. "Why do you weep?" he said;--"and, Mary, why do you not answer my question? If there be anybody else you must tell me now."
"There is n.o.body else," she said almost angrily. "There never was.
There never could be."
"And yet there was somebody!" She pouted her lips at him, glancing up into his face for half a second, and then again hung her head down.
"Mary, do not grudge me my delight."
"No;--no;--no!"