Part 33 (2/2)
So he stood and twisted his moustache, and said nothing,--nothing, I mean, except mere little words of a.s.sent and echo to Rosamond's chatter about the pretty view.
At last,--”You are fond of scenery, Miss Holabird?”
Rosamond laughed.
”O yes, I suppose I am; but we don't call this scenery. It is just pleasantness,--beauty. I don't think I quite like the word 'scenery.' It seems artificial,--got up for outside effect. And the most beautiful things do not speak from the outside, do they? I never travelled, Mr. Mucklegrand. I have just lived here, until I have lived _into_ things, or they into me. I rather think it is travelling, skimming about the world in a hurry, that makes people talk about 'scenery.' Isn't it?”
”I dare say. I don't care for skimming, myself. But I like to go to nice places, and stay long enough to get into them, as you say. I mean to go to Scotland next year. I've a place there among the hills and lochs, Miss Rosamond.”
”Yes. I have heard so. I should think you would wish to go and see it.”
”I'll tell you what I wish, Miss Holabird!” he said suddenly, letting go his moustache, and turning round with sufficient manfulness, and facing her. ”I suppose there is a more gradual and elegant way of saying it; but I believe straightforward is as good as any. I wish you cared for me as I care for you, and then you would go with me.”
Rosamond was utterly confounded. She had not imagined that it could be hurled at her, this fas.h.i.+on; she thought she could parry and put aside, if she saw anything coming. She was bewildered and breathless with the shock of it; she could only blindly, and in very foolish words, hurl it back.
”O, dear, no!” she exclaimed, her face crimson. ”I mean--I don't--I couldn't! I beg your pardon, Mr. Mucklegrand; you are very good; I am very sorry; but I wish you hadn't said so. We had better go back.”
”No,” said Archie Mucklegrand, ”not yet. I've said it now. I said it like a moon calf, but I mean it like a man. Won't you--can't you--be my wife, Rosamond? I must know that.”
”No, Mr. Mucklegrand,” answered Rosamond, quite steadily now and gently. ”I could not be. We were never meant for each other. You will think so yourself next year,--by the time you go to Scotland.”
”I shall never think so.”
Of course he said that; young men always do; they mean it at the moment, and nothing can persuade them otherwise.
”I told you I had lived right here, and grown into these things, and they into me,” said Rosamond, with a sweet slow earnestness, as if she thought out while she explained it; and so she did; for the thought and meaning of her life dawned upon her with a new perception, as she stood at this point and crisis of it in the responsibility of her young womanhood. ”And these, and all the things that have influenced me, have given my life its direction; and I can see clearly that it was never meant to be your way. I do not know what it will be; but I know yours is different. It would be wrenching mine to turn it so.”
”But I would turn mine for you,” said Archie.
”You couldn't. Lives _grow_ together. They join beforehand, if they join at all. You like me, perhaps,--just what you see of me; but you do not know me, nor I you. If it--this--were meant, we should.”
”Should what?”
”Know. Be sure.”
”I am sure of what I told you.”
”And I thank you very much; but I do not--I never could--belong to you.”
What made Rosamond so wise about knowing and belonging?
She could not tell, herself; she had never thought it out before; but she seemed to see it very clearly now. She did not belong to Archie Mucklegrand, nor he to her; he was mistaken; their lives had no join; to make them join would be a force, a wrenching.
Archie Mucklegrand did not care to have it put on such deep ground.
He liked Rosamond; he wanted her to like him; then they should be married, of coa.r.s.e, and go to Scotland, and have a good time; but this quiet philosophy cooled him somewhat. As they walked up the bank together, he wondered at himself a little that he did not feel worse about it. If she had been coquettish, or perverse, she might have been all the more bewitching to him. If he had thought she liked somebody else better, he might have been furiously jealous; but ”her way of liking a fellow would be a slow kind of a way, after all.” That was the gist of his thought about it; and I believe that to many very young men, at the age of waxed moustaches and German dancing, that ”slow kind of a way” in a girl is the best possible insurance against any lasting damage that their own enthusiasm might suffer.
He had not been contemptible in the offering of his love; his best had come out at that moment; if it does not come out then, somehow,--through face and tone, in some plain earnestness or simple n.o.bleness, if not in fas.h.i.+on of the spoken word as very well it may not,--it must be small best that the man has in him.
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