Part 36 (1/2)
Did she expect to be happy? Scarcely, for she did not trust him enough to be frank with him. Sophisticated men soon tire of candid women: it was in this faith that Isabel had clouded herself in such an iridescence of mystery and coquetry, laughing when she felt more inclined to cry, eluding Lawrence when she would rather have rested in his arms. Roses and steel: innocence in a saffron scarf: ascendancy won and held only by surrender: such was to be the life of the woman who married Lawrence Hyde, as she had seen it long ago on a June evening, and as, with some necessary failings for human weakness, she carried it out to the end. If any moralities at all were to be fulfilled in their union, it was for her to impose them, for Hyde had none. Within the limits of his code of honour he would simply do as he liked. And with nine-tenths of her nature Isabel would have liked nothing better than to shut her eyes and yield to him as all her life she had yielded to Val, for she too loved red roses and suns.h.i.+ne and the pleasure of the senses: but her innermost self, the warder of her will, would rather have died than yield, she the child of an ascetic and trained in Val's simple code of duty.
But there should be compromise: one must not--one need not--cheat him of the pride of his manhood. Isabel's heart ached for her lover. She could not defend herself against him any longer, and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, ”You may yield now. Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well as unkind.”
She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe had vanished. His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he began to taste the sweetness of his victory. ”Have I won you?”
he whispered, his voice as unsteady as a boy's in his first pa.s.sion. ”You won't fail me?”
”Oh never! never!”
”You have the most beautiful eyes in the world. I believe one reason why I always secretly liked Val was that his eyes reminded me of yours. I can't stand it when he looks at me under your eyelashes. I always want to say 'Here take it Val.'”
”Take what?”
”Anything he wants. I'm going to extend a protecting wing over my young brother-in-law. He shall not, no, I swear he shall not come to grief. I can't stand it, he's too like you. When did you first fall in love with me?”
”When did you?”
”The night you went to sleep in the garden at Wanhope.”
”Oh! when you kissed me?”
”When I--?”
Isabel was speechless.
”How do you know I kissed you, Isabel? I thought you were asleep.”
”So I was,” said Isabel, blus.h.i.+ng deeply. ”Oh! Captain Hyde, I wasn't pretending! But I woke up directly after, and heard a rustling in the wood, and I--I knew, don't ask me: I could feel -”
”This?”
”Yes,” Isabel murmured, resigning herself.
”How strange!” said Lawrence under his breath. ”You were asleep and you felt me kiss you?”
She looked up at him through her eyelashes. ”Is that so strange?”
”Rather: because I never did kiss you.”
”Not?”
”No: I bent over you to do it, but you were so defenceless and so young, I didn't dare.-- Isabel! my darling! what have I done?”
The first days of love are supposed to be blind days, but too often they are days of overstrained criticism, when from very fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not exist. The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an exquisite joy to Isabel. This trivial, crucial scruple, of morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign of a chast.i.ty of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the coa.r.s.e and careless sins that he had never denied. After all no marriage on earth is perfect, and husbands as well as wives have to make allowances; but as years go on, and affection does its daily work, the rubs are less and less felt, till the time comes when deeper wisdom can look back smiling on the fears of youth.
Isabel at nineteen did not possess this wisdom but she had youth itself.
The flames crackled low on the hearth: the wind, a small autumn wind, piped weakly round white wall and high chimneypot: outside in the garden late roses were shedding their petals loosened by a touch of frost in the night. ”Tears because you mistrusted me?”
said Hyde in his soft voice. ”But why should the Gentile maiden trust a Jew?”