by Grant Allen
“No,” the blond young man replied stoutly. “I prefer beauty to prettiness. I never cared much for tow-haired dolls. Eyes with a soul in them are much more to my taste. Besides,” he added, breaking off suddenly, “she’s not quite our sort, you know, Miss Gascoyne.”
“Our sort?” Faith echoed interrogatively, taken aback at the inclusiveness of that first person plural. “I — I don’t quite understand you.”
“Well, your sort then,” the blond young man corrected, with imperturbable good humor, “if you won’t let me reckon myself in the same day with you. I mean she’s not a person of any birth or position or refinement; she’s a parvenue, you know, a perfect parvenue. I don’t mean to say I go in for a Plantagenet ancestry myself,” he continued quickly, seeing Faith was trying hard to put in a word and interrupt him; “but I don’t like people quite so freshly fledged as she is. I prefer them with some tincture of polite society.”
Faith blushed up to the eyes with some strange sense of shame. It was so novel a position for her to find herself in, that she hardly knew how to brazen it out. “She was very well received at Mentone,” she stammered out uneasily.
“At Mentone? Oh, yes; in a cosmopolitan place like that one can swallow anybody — why we even swallowed Miss Blair’s chaperon, that delightful little humbug and adventuress, Mme. Ceriolo, who anywhere else in the world would have been impossible. But, hang it all! you know, Miss Gascoyne, you wouldn’t like your own brother, now, for instance, to marry her?”
Faith looked down, and hardly knew what to say. “It ever Paul marries,” she answered at last, speaking out her whole heart, “I should like him to marry — someone more worthy of him.”
As she spoke she lifted her eyes again, and met Nea Blair’s, who, seated close by, had just caught by accident the last few words of their conversation. Nea let her glance fall upon the carpet, and colored faintly. Then Faith felt sure, with an instinctive certainty, that Nea was not wholly indifferent to her penniless brother.
When they went upstairs that night again, they sat long talking in Nea’s room till their candles had burned low in the socket. They talked unrestrainedly, like two bosom friends. Faith wasn’t afraid any longer of the “grand girl” now. She was more at home with Nea than she had ever been with anybody else, except Paul, before. As she rose at last, reluctantly, to go to bed, she held Nea’s hand a long time in hers. “Nea,” she said, pressing it hard, “how strange it all seems! I was so afraid to meet you only four days since — though it’s like a year now, for every day’s been so crammed with pleasure — and to-night I can’t bear to think I’ve got to go back so soon to my school once more, and my dull routine, and my petty life, and never again see anything more of you. It’s been all like a beautiful, beautiful dream — meeting you here, and all the rest — and I shall feel so sad to have to go away by and by and leave it all.”
“Perhaps we shall meet often again in the future now we’ve once got to know and love each other,” Nea answered, soothing her.
Faith turned with the candle in her hand to go. Great tears were in her eyes. She trembled violently.
“No, no,” she said; “I sometimes think it’s all a mistake ever for a moment to come out of one’s native sphere. It makes the revulsion seem all the worse when you have to go back to it.”
CHAPTER XX.
BREAKING THE ICE.
THE row up the river to Ensham was delightful, the sky was blue, the meadows were green, the water was clear, and the lilies that lolled like Oriental beauties on its top were snow-white and golden. Only one thing damped Faith’s and Nea’s happiness — it was the last day of their visit to Oxford.
They had much to regret. The gardens were so beautiful, the colleges so calm, the river so peaceful — and the two young men had been so very attentive.
Faith wondered how, after Mr. Thistleton’s open and unaffected homage, she could ever endure the boorish politeness of the few young fellows she saw from time to time after rare intervals at Hillborough. Nea wondered how, after seeing so much of that nice Mr. Gascoyne at Mentone and Oxford, she could ever relapse into the humdrum life of keeping house for her father in the Cornish Rectory. Mr. Gascoyne was so clever, and so full of beautiful ideas! He seemed to be so thoroughly human all through. Nea loved to hear him talk about men and things. And she really did think, in a sort of way, that Mr. Gascoyne, perhaps to some extent, liked her.
So when she found herself, after lunch at Mrs. Douglas’ picnic, strolling away with Paul toward the field where the fritillaries grow, and the large purple orchises, she was conscious generally of a faint thrill of pleasure — that strange, indefinite, indefinable thrill which goes so much deeper than the shallow possibilities of our haphazard language.
They wandered and talked for many minutes, picking the great chequered blossoms as they moved, and never thinking whither they went, either with their feet or their tongues, as is the wont of adolescence. Nea was full of praise for Faith — such an earnest girl, so sincere and profound when you came to know her; and Paul, who, to a great extent, had been Faith’s teacher, was proud that his pupil should be liked and appreciated. “But what a pity,” Nea said at last, “we should have to part tomorrow! For we’ve both of us got on so well together.”
“It is a pity,” Paul said, “a very great pity. Faith has never enjoyed anything so much in her life, I know; and your being there has made it doubly enjoyable for her.”
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say so,” Nea exclaimed, with evident delight. “You can’t think how much I’ve enjoyed having her there too. She’s a dear girl. We’ve had such long, long talks together in our own rooms every evening. And, do you know, Mr. Gascoyne,” she added shyly, “before she came I was so afraid of meeting her.”
“Why?” Paul asked, unable to understand such a feeling toward Faith on the part of a born lady like Nea.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nea answered. “I can’t exactly say why. But, sometimes, when you want to like somebody ever so much, don’t you know, you’re so afraid in return they won’t like you.”
“And you wanted to like Faith?” Paul asked, all tremulous.
“I wanted to like her, oh, ever so much. But I was afraid she mightn’t take a fancy to me. It often happens so, of course; but I did not want it to be so with her. And now I’m sure she likes me very much, and that’s such a comfort to me.”
“You’re very kind,” Paul answered, embarrassed.
There was a long pause, and their eyes met. Eyes can say so much more than tongues. Nea’s fell again as she added slowly:— “And I hope now we shall meet very, very often.”
“Who? You and Faith?” Paul cried, biting his lip hard, and holding in his words with difficulty.
“Yes,” Nea said. “Some day she must come down to Cornwall and see us.”
Paul looked up from the fritillaries, and felt his heartbeat and heave.
“That can never, never be,” he answered solemnly.
Nea turned to him all at once with an astonished look.
“Never! Mr. Gascoyne?” she cried. “Oh, don’t say that! I want to meet her very often now. We’re friends for life. Why shouldn’t I see her?”
It was one of those moments in a man’s life when, do what he will, the passion within him gets the better of him and outmasters him. He looked into Nea’s deep eyes — those eyes he would never see after to morrow again — and answered in a tone of poignant regret, “Because you and I must keep as far apart as we can from one another.”
Nea more than half guessed his meaning at once, but she would have it direct from his own very lips before she would believe it.
“And why, Mr. Gascoyne?” she asked with a throbbing heart.
“Because,” Paul said boldly, blurting out the whole truth in spite of himself, “Nea, I love you.”
There was a faint, short interval, during which Nea felt a sort of electric quiver pass all through her frame; and then she murmured very low, “Thank you, Mr. Gascoyne, thank you
.”
“And I’m afraid,” Paul went on — with insensate folly, as he thought to himself—” I’m afraid — I’m sure — you love me a little in return, Nea.”
Nea raised her eyes, one blush from chin to forehead, and met his gaze bashfully.
“More than that — a great deal,” she said with a tremor.
Paul sat down on the dry bank by the hedge, and seated Nea gently on a big stone beside him.
“And though I shall never see you again after tomorrow,” he said, “I was wicked enough and foolish enough — it came over me so just now — that I could not avoid giving myself the satisfaction of telling you so.”
“I’m glad you did,” Nea murmured through the tears that struggled hard to rise and choke her utterance. “I like to know it.”
“It was very wrong of me, very wrong of me,” Paul cried, already penitent; “but, Nea, I can’t be sorry I did, when I think how sweet, how delicious it is for me to know that through all my future life I can carry away the memory of those words you just uttered. ‘More than that, a great deal’ — I shall never forget them.”
“Thank you,” Nea cried once more, with sweet simplicity.
Paul looked at her long, with a great yearning in his heart.
“And it’s hard to think,” he went on, “we must part forever to-morrow.”
“Why forever?” Nea asked, looking back at him again with womanly trust. “Why forever, Mr. Gascoyne? If you love me, and I love you, why need it be forever?”
Paul tore a purple fritillary to pieces nervously.
“Oh, what have I done?” he said, looking up at her anxiously. “Why did I ever begin it? I’ve acted so wrong, so wickedly, so cruelly! I ought never to have spoken to you on the subject at all. I ought to have locked it up tight — tight in my own bosom.”
“I should have found it out, even if you hadn’t told me,” Nea answered simply. “And whether you told me or not, I, at least, would have loved you.”
Paul took her little hand unreproved in his own.
“I was mad, though,” he said; “I was wicked to trouble you. Nea, I won’t say anything about the difference in our positions, or anything like that, for I know you are good enough and true enough to love a man for himself, and not for his wealth or what else he can give you. I know, poor as I am, and sprung from where I spring, you’d be willing to take me. But I oughtn’t to have spoken to you at all about my love. I ought to have stifled and hidden it all from you, knowing, as I do now, that we can never marry. It was cruel of me so to cross your path, so to wring that confession from your own sweet lips — only to tell you that I can never marry you.”
“You didn’t wring it from me,” Nea whispered low. “I like to tell you so.”
“O Nea!” cried Paul, and pressed her hand in silence.
“Yes, I like to tell you,” she repeated. “I love to tell you. I’m glad for my own sake you’ve made it possible for me to tell you. I liked you very, very much at Mentone; and every day I’ve seen you since I’ve liked you better, and better, and better. And then, I’ve talked so much about you with Faith. Every evening she and I have done nothing but talk about you. That was why I wanted to like Faith so much, because — because I was so very fond of you. But, Paul,” she said it out quite naturally, “Paul, why can’t you marry me?”
Paul began in some vague, shadowy, indefinite way to tell her once more about those terrible claims that so weighed upon his conscience, but before he’d got well through the very first sentence Nea said, interrupting him:
“I know, I know. I suppose you mean about Mr. Solomons.”
“Has Faith told you all about Mr. Solomons, then?” Paul exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes,” Nea answered. “Of course I wanted to know as much as I could about you, because I was so much interested in you, and — and — I loved you so dearly; and Faith told me all about that, and it made me so very, very sorry for you.”
“Then, if you know all that,” Paul cried, “you must know also how wrong it was of me to speak to you, how impossible for me ever to marry you.”
Nea looked down at the fritillaries in her hand, and began to arrange them nervously with twitching fingers. After a while she spoke.
“I don’t think so,” she said in a very calm voice. “Even if we two can never, never, marry, it’s better I should know you love me, and you should know I love you. It’s better to have found that out, even though nothing more come of it, than to go through life blindly, not knowing whether we had ever won one another. I shall go back to Cornwall, oh, ever so much happier than I went away, feeling certain at least now that you love me, Paul.”
The young man leaned forward. His lips pursed up of themselves. Nea didn’t shrink away from him. She didn’t tremble or withdraw. She allowed him to kiss her. The kiss thrilled through her inmost being.
Paul leaned back once more, all penitence, against the bank.
“What have I done?” he cried, aghast at his own folly. “Let us rise and go, Nea. The longer we stay here, the worse and worse will we make matters.”
“No,” Nea answered quietly. “I don’t want to go. I like sitting here. I can’t let you go yet. We must understand better how we stand with each other. You mustn’t go, Paul, till you’ve told me everything.”
Paul, delighted in his secret heart at the moment’s respite, began once more, and told her all his fears and doubts for the future — how he was bound hand and foot to Mr. Solomons; how he must spend his whole life in trying to repay him; and what folly it would be for him to dream of marrying. He reproached himself bitterly for having let Nea see into the secret of his heart. He ought never to have told her — he said, he ought never to have told her.
Nea listened to him out to the very end. Then she fixed her earnest eyes upon him and answered softly, “Paul, I will wait for you if I wait a lifetime.”
“It isn’t a case for waiting,” Paul cried, “it’s a case of despair!”
“Then I won’t despair,” Nea answered. “Not even to please you. I’ll be happy enough in knowing you love me.”
For a minute or two more they talked it over together in gentle whispers. Nea could never love anyone else, she said; so what did it matter whether they could marry or not? She would be his, at any rate, for she could never be anybody else’s.
“And when I go, you’ll write to me, Paul?” she added pleadingly.
Paul hesitated.
“I mustn’t,” he cried. “I oughtn’t to, Nea. Remember, we two are not engaged to each other.”
“We’re more than engaged,” Nea answered boldly, with the boldness of a true woman’s heart. “We’re each other’s already. Paul, I’ll write to you, and you must write to me. You have great powers, and you’ll do good work in the world yet. In time, perhaps, you’ll pay off all this weight of debt that clings like a millstone round your neck; and then you’ll marry me. But, if not, we’ll live for one another forever. And I shall live happy if I know you love me.”
“One more kiss, Nea!”
“As many more as ever you like, Paul.”
CHAPTER XXI.
COINCIDENCES.
IN another part of the fields, meanwhile, Faith Gascoyne and Charlie Thistleton had wandered off together along a backwater of the river, in search of forget-me-nots, they said, and white waterlilies. Oh, those innocent flowers, how much they have to answer for! How many times have they not been made the excuse for such casual deviations from the straight path of Britannic chaperonage.
Thistleton had helped to row them up stream, and Faith thought she had never seen him look so handsome as he looked just then in his bright Christ Church boating jacket, with the loose flannel shirt showing white in front where the jacket lay open. A manly man seldom looks manlier than in boating costume. In evening clothes, to be sure, as she had seen him at Exeter concert, he was perhaps as gentlemanly; but that was mere gloss and outward show; the young Greek god came out more fully in the garb of athletics. Faith thought with
a sigh that to-morrow her holiday would be over forever, and she must needs go back to the vacant young men of Hillborough.
They sat down by a floodgate on a tiny side stream, and arranged their forget-me-nots into a respectable bundle. The floodgate had a sluice door in it, and the water pouring through made murmuring music. The sky was just chequered with fleecy clouds, and the wind whispered through the willows on the margin. It was all a sweet idyl to Faith’s full young heart; and Mr. Thistleton by her side was so kind and attentive.
She knew Mr. Thistleton admired her — in a way. She couldn’t help seeing, as she sat there in her prettiest morning frock, that he cast eyes of delight every now and again at her rich brown complexion and her uncommon features. For Faith Gascoyne was above everything uncommon-looking; a certain individual stamp of distinction, half highbred, half gipsy-like, was the greatest charm of her peculiarly cut features. And Thistleton gazed at her with almost rude admiration — at least, Faith would almost have thought it rude if it hadn’t been so evidently sincere and simple minded.
Nevertheless, when Thistleton, turning round abruptly, asked her point blank that alarming question, “Miss Gascoyne, do you think you could ever like me?” Faith was so completely taken by surprise that she started back suddenly, and let the forget-me-nots tumble from her hands on to the beam of the floodgate.
“Why, of course, Mr. Thistleton,” she answered, with a faint smile, “I like you — oh, ever so much! You’re so kind and good-natured.”
“But that’s not what I mean,” the blond young man corrected hastily, “I mean — well, Faith, I mean, do you think you could ever love me?”
If ever a man took a woman by storm in this world it was surely this one!
There was a long pause, during which Faith picked up the forget-me-nots one by one, and arranged them together with deliberate care into a neat little bouquet. But her heart was throbbing fast all the while for all that.
At last, she looked down and whispered low, while the blond young man waited eagerly for her answer, “Mr. Thistleton, you ought never to have asked me that question at all. Consider — consider the difference in our positions.”