Part 28 (1/2)

She did not answer for a long time. It was as if everything in the world had drawn to the breaking point, and in a minute must certainly break.

”Yes,” she said, at last, ”I know.”

Abruptly, by some impalpable sign, he knew what the answer would be, and he remained still.

She bent down over him and softened to her wonderful smile.

”Promise me,” she insisted.

He promised with his still face.

”If _I_ do not hold you cheap, you will never hold yourself cheap----”

”If you do not hold me cheap, you mean?”

She bent down quite close beside him. ”I hold you,” she said, and then whispered, ”_dear_.”

”Me?”

She laughed aloud.

He was astonished beyond measure. He stipulated, lest there might be some misconception, ”You will marry me?”

She was laughing, inundated by the sense of bountiful power, of possession and success. He looked quite a nice little man to have.

”Yes,” she laughed. ”What else could I mean?” and, ”Yes.”

He felt as a praying hermit might have felt, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the midst of his quiet devotions, his modest sackcloth and ashes, and hurled neck and crop over the glittering gates of Paradise, smack among the iridescent wings, the bright-eyed Cherubim. He felt like some lowly and righteous man dynamited into Bliss....

His hand tightened upon the rope that steadies one upon the stairs of stone. He was for kissing her hand and did not.

He said not a word more. He turned about, and with something very like a scared expression on his face led the way into the obscurity of their descent.

--3

Everyone seemed to understand. Nothing was said, nothing was explained, the merest touch of the eyes sufficed. As they cl.u.s.tered in the castle gateway Coote, Kipps remembered afterwards, laid hold of his arm as if by chance and pressed it. It was quite evident he knew. His eyes, his nose, shone with benevolent congratulations, shone, too, with the sense of a good thing conducted to its climax. Mrs. Wals.h.i.+ngham, who had seemed a little fatigued by the hill, recovered, and was even obviously stirred by affection for her daughter. There was, in pa.s.sing, a motherly caress. She asked Kipps to give her his arm in walking down the steep.

Kipps in a sort of dream obeyed. He found himself trying to attend to her, and soon he was attending.

She and Kipps talked like sober, responsible people and went slowly, while the others drifted down the hill together, a loose little group of four. He wondered momentarily what they would talk about and then sank into his conversation with Mrs. Wals.h.i.+ngham. He conversed, as it were, out of his superficial personality, and his inner self lay stunned in unsuspected depths within. It had an air of being an interesting and friendly talk, almost their first long talk together. Hitherto he had had a sort of fear of Mrs. Wals.h.i.+ngham, as of a person possibly satirical, but she proved a soul of sense and sentiment, and Kipps, for all of his abstraction, got on with her unexpectedly well. They talked a little upon scenery and the inevitable melancholy attaching to the old ruins and the thought of vanished generations.

”Perhaps they jousted here,” said Mrs. Wals.h.i.+ngham.

”They was up to all sorts of things,” said Kipps, and then the two came round to Helen. She spoke of her daughter's literary ambitions. ”She will do something, I feel sure. You know, Mr. Kipps, it's a great responsibility to a mother to feel her daughter is--exceptionally clever.”

”I dessay it is,” said Kipps. ”There's no mistake about that.”

She spoke, too, of her son--almost like Helen's twin--alike, yet different. She made Kipps feel quite fatherly. ”They are so quick, so artistic,” she said, ”so full of ideas. Almost they frighten me. One feels they need opportunities--as other people need air.”

She spoke of Helen's writing. ”Even when she was quite a little dot she wrote verse.”

(Kipps, sensation.)