To his astonishment, she heaved a deep sigh, as if relieved from a sudden fear. His face clouded, and his eyebrows rose. Was she guilty, then, after all?
With the quick eyes of love, she saw the change; and broke out pa.s.sionately,--
"Yes; suspect me! suspect me, if you will! only give me time! Send me to prison, innocent as I am--innocent as that child there above--would G.o.d I were dying like her!--Only give me time! O misery! I had hoped you had forgotten--that it was lost in the sea--that--what am I saying?--Only give me time!"--and she dropped on her knees before him, wringing her hands.
"Miss Harvey! This is not worthy of you. If you be innocent, as I don"t doubt, what more do you need--or I?"
He took her hands, and lifted her up: but she still kept looking down, round, upwards, like a hunted deer, and pleading in words which seemed sobbed out--as by some poor soul on the rack--between choking spasms of agony.
"Oh, I don"t know,--G.o.d help me! O Lord, help me! I will try and find it--I know I shall find it! only have patience; have patience with me a little, and I know I shall bring it you; and then--and then you will forgive?--forgive?"
And she laid her hands upon his arms, and looked up in his face with a piteous smile of entreaty.
She had never looked so beautiful as at that moment. The devil saw it; and entered into the heart of Thomas Thurnall. He caught her in his arms, kissed away her tears, stopped her mouth with kisses. "Yes! I"ll wait--wait for ever, if you will! I"ll lose another belt, for such another look as that!"
She was bewildered for a moment, poor fond wretch, at finding herself where she would gladly have stayed for ever: but quickly she recovered her reason.
"Let me go!" she cried, struggling. "This is not right! Let me go, sir!" and she tried to cover her burning cheeks with her hands.
"I will not, Grace! I love you! I love you, I tell you!"
"You do not, sir!" and she struggled still more fiercely. "Do not deceive yourself! Me you cannot deceive! Let me go, I say! You could not demean yourself to love a poor girl like me!"
Utterly losing his head, Tom ran on with pa.s.sionate words.
"No, sir! you know that I am not fit to be your wife: and do you fancy that I--"
Maddened now, Tom went on, ere he was aware, from a foolish deed to a base speech.
"I know nothing, but that I shall keep you in p.a.w.n for my belt. Till that is at least restored, you are in my power, Grace! Remember that!"
She thrust him away with so sudden and desperate a spasm, that he was forced to let her go. She stood gazing at him, a trembling deer no longer, but rather a lioness at bay, her face flashing beautiful indignation.
"In your power! Yes, sir! My character, my life, for aught I know: but not my soul, Send me to Bodmin Gaol if you will; but offer no more insults to a modest maiden! Oh!"--and her expression changed to one of lofty sorrow and pity;--"Oh! to find all men alike at heart? After having fancied you--fancied you" (what she had fancied him her woman"s modesty dare not repeat)--"to find you even such another as Mr.
Trebooze!"
Tom was checked. As for mere indignation, in such cases, he had seen enough of that to trust it no more than "ice that is one night old:"
but pity for him was a weapon of defence to which he was unaccustomed.
And there was no contempt in her pity; and no affectation either. Her voice was solemn, but tender, gently upbraiding, like her countenance.
Never had he felt Grace"s mysterious attraction so strong upon him; and for the first and last time, perhaps, for many a year, he answered with downcast eyes of shame.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Harvey. I have been rude--mad. If you will look in your gla.s.s when you go home, and have a woman"s heart in you, you may at least see an excuse for me: but like Mr. Trebooze I am not.
Forgive and forget, and let us walk home rationally." And he offered to take her hand.
"No: not now! Not till I can trust you, sir!" said she. The words were lofty enough: but there was a profound melancholy in their tone which humbled Tom still more. Was it possible--she seemed to have hinted it--that she had thought him a very grand personage till now, and that he had disgraced himself in her eyes?
If a man had suspected Tom of such a feeling, I fear he would have cared little, save how to restore the balance by making a fool of the man who fancied him a fool: but no male self-sufficiency or pride is proof against the contempt of woman; and Tom slunk along by the schoolmistress"s side, as if he had been one of her naughtiest school-children. He tried, of course, to brazen it out to his own conscience. He had done no harm, after all; indeed, never seriously meant any. She was making a ridiculous fuss about nothing. It was all part and parcel of her methodistical cant. He dared say that she was not as prudish with the methodist parson. And at that base thought he paused; for a flush of rage, and a strong desire on such hypothesis to slay the said methodist parson, or any one else who dared even to look sweet on Grace, showed him plainly enough what he had long been afraid of, that he was really in love with her; and that, as he put it, if she did not make a fool of herself about him, he was but too likely to end in making a fool of himself about her. However, he must speak, to support his own character as a man of the world;--it would never do to knock under to a country girl in this way;--she might go and boast of it all over the town;--beside, foiled or not, he would not give in without trying her mettle somewhat further.
"Miss Harvey, will you forgive me?"
"I have forgiven you."
"Will you forget?"
"If I can!" she said, with a marked expression, which signified (though, of course, she did not mean Tom to understand it), "some of what is past is too precious, and some too painful, to forget."
"I do not ask you to forget all which has pa.s.sed!"
"I am afraid that there is nothing which would be any credit to you, sir, to have remembered."
"Credit or none," said Tom, unabashed, "do not forget one word that I said."
She looked hastily and sidelong round,--"That I am in your power?"
"No! curse it! I wish I had bitten out my tongue before I had said that. No! that I am in your power, Miss Harvey."
"Sir! I never heard you say that; and if you had, the sooner anything so untrue is forgotten the better."
"I said that I loved you, Grace; and if that does not mean that--"
"Sir! Mr. Thurnall! I cannot, I will not hear! You only insult me, sir, by speaking thus, when you know that--that you consider me--a thief!" and the poor girl burst into tears again.
"I do not! I do not;" cried Tom, growing really earnest at the sight of her sorrow, "Did I not begin this unhappy talk by begging your pardon for ever having let such a thought cross my mind?"
"But you do! you do! you told me as much at my own door; and I have seen it ever since, till I have almost gone mad under it!"
"I will swear to you by all that is sacred that I do not! Oh, Grace, the first moment I saw you my heart told me that it was impossible; and now, this afternoon, as I listened to you with that sick girl, I felt a wretch for ever having--Grace, I tell you, you made me feel, for the moment, a better man than I ever felt in my life before. A poor return I have made for that, truly!"
Grace looked up in his face gasping.
"Oh, say that! say that again. Oh, good Lord, merciful Lord, at last!
Oh, if you knew what it was to have even one weight lifted off, among all my heavy burdens, and that weight the hardest to bear. G.o.d forgive me that it should have been so! Oh, I can breathe freely now again, that I know I am not suspected by you."
"By you?" Tom could not but see what, after all, no human being can conceal, that Grace cared for him. And the devil came and tempted him once more: but this time it was in vain. Tom"s better angel had returned; Grace"s tender guilelessness, which would with too many men only have marked her out as the easier prey, was to him as a sacred shield before her innocence. So n.o.ble, so enthusiastic, so pure! He could not play the villain with that woman.
But there was plainly a mystery. What were the burdens, heavier even than unjust suspicion, of which she had spoken? There was no harm in asking.
"But, Grace--Miss Harvey--You will not be angry with me if I ask?--Why speak so often, as if finding this money depended on you alone? You wish me to recover it, I know; and if you can counsel me, why not do so? Why not tell me whom you suspect?"
Her old wild terror returned in an instant. She stopped short--
"Suspect? I suspect? Oh, I have suspected too many already! Suspected till I began to hate my fellow-creatures--hate life itself, when I fancied that I saw "thief" written on every forehead. Oh, do not ask me to suspect any more!"
Tom was silent.
"Oh," she cried, after a moment"s pause. "Oh, that we were back in those old times I have read of, when they used to put people to the torture to make them confess!"
"Why, in Heaven"s name?"