"I"ve had an offer made to me," he resumed, regaining his composure. "A sort of political post. If I accept it I shall have to leave England for a considerable time, almost immediately. That brought the thing to a point." Again he laughed. "It"s important to you too; because if you say no to me to-night, you"ll be rid of me for ever so long. Your life won"t be made impossible. I shouldn"t come to Blent again."
"A post that would take you away?" she murmured.
"Yes. You"d be left here in peace. I"ve not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough"s birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it.
His manner was involuntarily expressive. Even if she brought that sort of thing to Blent----! He turned back at the sound of a little laugh from Cecily and found her eyes sparkling.
"Father"s birthday present, Harry," said she.
Delighted with her mirth, he came to her, holding out his hands. She shook her head and leant back, looking at him.
"Sit as my mother did. You know. Yes, like that!" he cried.
She had obeyed him with a smile. Not to be denied now, he seized the hand that lay in her lap.
"A birthday! Yes, of course, you"re twenty-one! Really mistress of it all now! And you don"t know what to do with it, except spoil the arrangement of the furniture?"
She laughed low and luxuriously. "What am I to do with it?" she asked.
"Well, won"t you give it all to me?" As he spoke he laughed and kissed her hand. "I"ve come to ask you for it. Here I am. I"ve come fortune-hunting to-night."
"It"s all mine now, you say? Harry, take it without me."
"If I did, I"d burn it to the ground that it mightn"t remind me of you."
"Yes, yes! That"s what I"ve wanted to do!" she exclaimed, drawing her hand out of his and raising her arms a moment in the air. Addie Tristram"s pose was gone, but Harry did not miss it now.
"Take it without you indeed! It"s all for you and because of you."
"Really, really?" She grew grave. "Harry, dear, for pity"s sake tell me if you love me!"
"Haven"t I told you?" he cried gayly. "Where are the poets? Oh, for some good quotations! I"m infernally unpoetical, I know. Is this it--that you"re always before my eyes, always in my head, that you"re terribly in the way, that when I"ve got anything worth thinking I think it to you, anything worth doing I do it for you, anything good to say I say it to you? Is this it, that I curse myself and curse you? Is this it, that I know myself only as your lover and that if I"m not that, then I seem nothing at all? I"ve never been in love before, but all that sounds rather like it."
"And you"ll take Blent from me?"
"Yes, as the climax of all, I"ll take Blent from you."
To her it seemed the climax, the thing she found hardest to believe, the best evidence for the truth of those extravagant words which sounded so sweet in her ears. Harry saw this, but he held on his way. Nay, now he himself forgot his trick, and could still have gone on had there been none, had he in truth been accepting Blent from her hands. Even at the price of pride he would have had her now.
She rose suddenly, and began to walk to and fro across the end of the room, while he stood by the table watching her.
"Well, isn"t it time you said something to me?" he suggested with a smile.
"Give me time, Harry, give me time. The world"s all changed to-night.
You--yes, you came suddenly out of the darkness of the night"--she waved her hand toward the window--"and changed the world for me. How am I to believe it? And if I can believe it, what can I say? Let me alone for a minute, Harry dear."
He was well content to wait and watch. All time seemed before them, and how better could he fill it? He seemed himself to suffer in this hour a joyful transformation; to know better why men lived and loved to live, to reach out to the full strength and the full function of his being.
The world changed for him as he changed it for her.
Twice and thrice she had paced the gallery before she came and stood opposite to him. She put her hands up to her throat, saying, "I"m stifled--stifled with happiness, Harry."
For answer he sprang forward and caught her in his arms. In the movement he brushed roughly against the table; there was a little crash, and poor Mr Gainsborough"s birthday gift lay smashed to bits on the floor. For the second time their love bore hard on Mr Gainsborough"s crockery.
Startled they turned to look, and then they both broke into merry laughter. The trumpery thing had seemed a sign to them, and now the sign was broken. Their first kiss was mirthful over its destruction.
With a sigh of joy she disengaged herself from him.
"That"s settled then," said Harry. He paused a moment. "You had Janie and Bob Broadley here to-night? I saw them as I lay hidden by the road.
Does that kind of engagement attract you, Cecily?"
"Ours won"t be like that," she said, laughing triumphantly.
"Don"t let"s have one at all," he suggested, coming near to her again.
"Let"s have no engagement. Just a wedding."
"What?" she cried.
"It must be a beastly time," he went on, "and all the talk there"s been about us will make it more beastly still. Fancy Miss S. and all the rest of them! And--do you particularly want to wait? What I want is to be settled down, here with you."
Her eyes sparkled as she listened; she was in the mood, she was of the stuff, for any adventure.
"I should like to run off with you now," said he. "I don"t want to leave you at all, you see."
"Run off now?" She gave a joyful little laugh. "That"s just what I should like!"
"Then we"ll do it," he declared. "Well, to-morrow morning anyhow."
"Do you mean it?" she asked.
"Do you say no to it?"
She drew herself up with pride. "I say no to nothing that you ask of me."
Their hands met again as she declared her love and trust. "You"ve really come to me?" he heard her murmur. "Back to Blent and back to me?"
"Yes," he answered, smiling. She had brought into his mind again the truth she did not know. He had no time to think of it, for she offered him her lips again. The moment when he might have told her thus went by.
It was but an impulse; for he still loved what he was doing, and took delight in the risks of it. And he could not bear so to impair her joy.
Soon she must know, but she should not yet be robbed of her joy that it was she who could bring him back to Blent. For him in his knowledge, for her in her ignorance, there was an added richness of pleasure that he would not throw away, even although now he believed that were the truth known she would come to him still. Must not that be, since now he, even he, would come to her, though the truth had been otherwise?
"There"s a train from Fillingford at eight in the morning. I"m going back there to-night. I"ve got a fly waiting by the Pool--if the man hasn"t gone to sleep and the horse run away. Will you meet me there?
We"ll go up to town and be married as soon as we can--the day after to-morrow, I suppose."
"And then----?"
"Oh, then just come back here. We can go nowhere but here, Cecily."
"Just come back and----?"
"And let them find it out, and talk, and talk, and talk!" he laughed.