Part 8 (1/2)
And the air--no wind stirred it, though the wind was at work aloft--it was still and bright as crystal, and crisp and cold as new-iced wine, for the first autumn frost was falling.
They stood for a few moments looking at all these wonderful beauties of the mysterious night--which dwellers in the country so rarely appreciate, because to them they are common, daily things--and listening to the soft, long-drawn murmuring of the sea upon the s.h.i.+ngle. Then they went forward to the edge of the cliff, but although Morris threw the fur rug over it Mary did not seat herself in the comfortable-looking deck chair. Her desire for repose had departed. She preferred to lean upon the low grey wall in whose crannies grew lichens, tiny ferns, and, in their season, harebells and wallflowers. Morris came and leant at her side; for a while they both stared at the sea.
”Pray, are you making up poetry?” she inquired at last.
”Why do you ask such silly questions?” he answered, not without indignation.
”Because you keep muttering to yourself, and I thought that you were trying to get the lines to scan. Also the sea, and the sky, and the night suggest poetry, don't they?”
Morris turned his head and looked at her.
”_You_ suggest it,” he said, with desperate earnestness, ”in all that s.h.i.+ning white, especially when the moon goes in. Then you look like a beautiful spirit new lit upon the edge of the world.”
At first Mary was pleased, the compliment was obvious, and, coming from Morris, great. She had never heard him say so much as that before. Then she thought an instant, and the echo of the word ”spirit” came back to her mind, and jarred upon it with a little sudden shock. Even when he had a lovely woman at his side must his fancy be wandering to these unearthly denizens and similes.
”Please, Morris,” she said almost sharply, ”do not compare me to a spirit. I am a woman, nothing more, and if it is not enough that I should be a woman, then----” she paused, to add, ”I beg your pardon, I know you meant to be nice, but once I had a friend who went in for spirits--table-turning ones I mean--with very bad results, and I detest the name of them.”
Morris took this rebuff better than might have been expected.
”Would you object if one ventured to call you an angel?” he asked.
”Not if the word was used in a terrestrial sense. It excites a vision of possibilities, and the fib is so big that anyone must pardon it.”
”Very well, then; I call you that.”
”Thank you, I should be delighted to return the compliment. Can you think of any celestial definition appropriate to a young gentleman with dark eyes?”
”Oh! Mary, please stop making fun of me,” said Morris, with something like a groan.
”Why?” she asked innocently. ”Besides I wasn't making fun. It's only my way of carrying on conversation; they taught it me at school, you know.”
Morris made no answer; in fact, he did not know what on earth to say, or rather how to find the fitting words. After all, it was an accident and not his own intelligence that freed him from his difficulty. Mary moved a little, causing the white cloak, which was unfastened, to slip from her shoulders. Morris put out his hand to catch it, and met her hand. In another instant he had thrown his arm round her, drawn her to him, and kissed her on the lips. Then, abashed at what he had done, he let her go and picked up the cloak.
”Might I ask?” began Mary in her usual sweet, low tones. Then her voice broke, and her blue eyes filled with tears.
”I beg your pardon; I am a brute,” began Morris, utterly abased by the sight of these tears, which glimmered like pearls in the moonlight, ”but, of course, you know what I mean.”
Mary shook her head vacantly. Apparently she could not trust herself to speak.
”Dear, will you take me?”
She made no answer; only, after pausing for some few seconds as though lost in thought, with a little action more eloquent than any speech, she leant herself ever so slightly towards him.
Afterwards, as she lay in his arms, words came to him readily enough:
”I am not worth your having,” he said. ”I know I am an odd fellow, not like other men; my very failings have not been the same as other men's.
For instance--before heaven it is true--you are the first woman whom I ever kissed, as I swear to you that you shall be the last. Then, what else am I? A failure in the very work that I have chosen, and the heir to a bankrupt property! Oh! it is not fair; I have no right to ask you!”
”I think it quite fair, and here I am the judge, Morris.” Then, sentence by sentence, she went on, not all at once, but with breaks and pauses.
”You asked me just now if I loved you, and I told you--Yes. But you did not ask me when I began to love you. I will tell you all the same. I can't remember a time when I didn't; no, not since I was a little girl.