Part 86 (1/2)
Donal's eyes filled with tears. He was simple as a child. No male vanity, no self-exultation that a woman should love him, and tell him she loved him, sprang up in his heart. He knew she loved him; he loved her; all was so natural it could not be otherwise: he never presumed to imagine her once thinking of him as he had thought of Ginevra. He was her servant, willing and loving as any angel of G.o.d: that was all--and enough!
”You are not vexed with your pupil--are you?” she resumed, again looking up in his face, this time with a rosy flush on her own.
”Why?” said Donal, with wonder.
”For speaking so to my master.”
”Angry because you love me?”
”No, of course!” she responded, at once satisfied. ”You knew that must be! How could I but love you--better than any one else in the world!
You have given me life! I was dead.--You have been like another father to me!” she added, with a smile of heavenly tenderness. ”But I could not have spoken to you like this, if I had not known I was dying.”
The word shot a sting as of fire through Donal's heart.
”You are always a child, Mr. Grant,” she went on; ”death is making a child of me; it makes us all children: as if we were two little children together, I tell you I love you.--Don't look like that,” she continued; ”you must not forget what you have been teaching me all this time--that the will of G.o.d, the perfect G.o.d, is all in all! He is not a G.o.d far off: to know that is enough to have lived for! You have taught me that, and I love you with a true heart fervently.”
Donal could not speak. He knew she was dying.
”Mr. Grant,” she began again, ”my soul is open to his eyes, and is not ashamed. I know I am going to do what would by the world be counted unwomanly; but you and I stand before our Father, not before the world.
I ask you in plain words, knowing that if you cannot do as I ask you willingly, you will not do it. And be sure I shall plainly be dying before I claim the fulfilment of your promise if you give it. I do not want your answer all at once: you must think about it.”
Here she paused a while, then said,
”I want you to marry me, if you will, before I go.”
Donal could not yet speak. His soul was in a tumult of emotion.
”I am tired,” she said. ”Please go and think it over. If you say no, I shall only say, 'He knows best what is best!' I shall not be ashamed.
Only you must not once think what the world would say: of all people we have nothing to do with the world! We have nothing to do but with G.o.d and love! If he be pleased with us, we can afford to smile at what his silly children think of us: they mind only what their vulgar nurses say, not what their perfect father says: we need not mind them--need we?--I wonder at myself,” she went on, for Donal did not utter a word, ”for being able to speak like this; but then I have been thinking of it for a long time--chiefly as I lie awake. I am never afraid now--not though I lie awake all night: 'perfect love casteth out fear,' you know. I have G.o.d to love, and Jesus to love, and you to love, and my own father to love! When you know him, you will see how good a man can be without having been brought up like you!--Oh, Donal, do say something, or I shall cry, and crying kills me!”
She was sitting on a low chair, with the sunlight across her lap--for she was again in the sunny Garland-room--and the firelight on her face.
Donal knelt gently down, and laid his hands in the sunlight on her lap, just as if he were going to say his prayers at his mother's knee. She laid both her hands on his.
”I have something to tell you,” he said; ”and then you must speak again.”
”Tell me,” said Arctura, with a little gasp.
”When I came here,” said Donal, ”I thought my heart so broken that it would never love--that way, I mean--any more. But I loved G.o.d better than ever: and as one I would fain help, I loved you from the very first. But I should have scorned myself had I once fancied you loved me more than just to do anything for me I needed done. When I saw you troubled, I longed to take you up in my arms, and carry you like a lovely bird that had fallen from one of G.o.d's nests; but never once, my lady, did I think of your caring for my love: it was yours as a matter of course. I once asked a lady to kiss me--just once, for a good-bye: she would not--and she was quite right; but after that I never spoke to a lady but she seemed to stand far away on the top of a hill against a sky.”
He stopped. Her hands on his fluttered a little, as if they would fly.
”Is she still--is she--alive?” she asked.
”Oh yes, my lady.”
”Then she may--change--” said Arctura, and stopped, for there was a stone in her heart.