Part 63 (1/2)
”Who could help wis.h.i.+ng to be of use under such circ.u.mstances? Am I not enough thanked by seeing you all better?”
”I hardly know how I could have presumed to intrude here and disturb you and--and trouble you with such things as I can say--when you are come home for an interval of rest and quiet. Emily, if I had lost her, poor little girl, I never could have lifted up my head again. It was hard on that blameless little life, to be placed in such peril; but I suffered more than she did. Did you sometimes think so? Did you sometimes feel for me when you were watching her day and night, night and day?”
”Yes, John, I did.”
”I hoped so.”
”But now that the greatest part of the sorrow is over, fold it up and put it away, lay it at the feet of the Saviour; it is his, for He has felt it too.” When she saw his hands, that they had become white and thin, and that he was hollow-eyed, she felt a sharp pang of pity. ”It is time now for you to think of yourself,” she said.
”No,” he answered, with a gesture of distaste. ”The less of that the better. I am utterly and for ever out of my own good graces. I will not forgive myself, and I cannot forget--have I only one mistake to deplore?
I have covered myself with disgrace,” he continued, with infinite self-scorn; ”even you with your half divine pity cannot excuse me there.”
”Cannot I?” she answered with a sweet wistfulness, that was almost tender.
He set his teeth as if in a pa.s.sion against himself, a flash came from the blue eyes, and his Saxon complexion showed the blood through almost to the roots of the hair. ”I have covered myself with disgrace--I am the most unmanly fool that ever breathed--I hate myself!” He started up and paced the room, as if he felt choked, whilst she looked on amazed for the moment, and not yet aware what this meant.
”John!” she exclaimed.
”I suppose you thought I had forgotten to despise myself,” he went on in a tone rather less defiant. ”When that night I asked you for a kiss--I had not, nothing of the kind--I thought my mind would go, or my breath would leave me before the morning. Surely that would have been so but for you. But if I have lived through this for good ends, one at least has been that I have learned my place in creation--and yours. I have seen more than once since that you have felt vexed with yourself for the form your compa.s.sion took then. I deserve that you should think I misunderstood, but I did not. I came to tell you so. It should have been above all things my care not to offend the good angel so necessary in my house during those hours of my misfortune. But I am destined never to be right--never. I let you divine all too easily the secret I should have kept--my love, my pa.s.sion. It was my own fault, to betray it was to dismiss you. Well, I have done that also.”
Emily drew a long breath, put her hand to her delicate throat, and turning away hastily moved into the window, and gazed out with wide-opened eyes; Her face suffused with a pale tint of carnation was too full of unbelieving joy to be shown to him yet. He had made a mistake, though not precisely the mistake he supposed. He was destined, so long as he lived, never to have it explained. It was a mistake which made all things right again, made the past recede, and appear a dream, and supplied a sweet reason for all the wifely duty, all the long fealty and impa.s.sioned love she was to bestow on him ever after.
It was strange, even to her, who was so well accustomed to the unreasoning, exaggerated rhapsody of a lover, to hear him; his rage against himself, his entire hopelessness; and as for her, she knew not how to stop him, or how to help him; she could but listen and wonder.
Nature helped him, however; for a waft of summer wind coming in at that moment, swung the rose-branches that cl.u.s.tered round the window, and flung some of their white petals on her head. Something else stirred, she felt a slight movement behind her, and a little startled, turned involuntarily to look, and to see her cap--the widow's delicate cap--wafted along the carpet by the air, and settling at John Mortimer's feet.
He lifted it up, and she stood mute while she saw him fold it together with a man's awkwardness, but with something of reverence too; then, as if he did not know what else to do with it, he laid it on the table before an opened miniature of Fred Walker.
After a moment's consideration she saw him close this miniature, folding its little doors together.
”That, because I want to ask a favour of you,” he said.
”What is it?” she asked, and blushed beautifully.
”You gave me a kiss, let me also bestow one--one parting kiss--and I will go.”
He was about to go then, he meant to consider himself dismissed. She could not speak, and he came up to her, she gave him her hand, and he stooped and kissed her.
Something in her eyes, or perhaps the blush on her face, encouraged him to take her for a moment into his arms. He was extremely pale, but when she lifted her face from his breast a strange gleam of hope and wonder flashed out of his eyes.
She had never looked so lovely in her life, her face suffused with a soft carnation, her lucid grey-blue eyes full of sweet entreaty.
Nevertheless, she spoke in a tone of the quietest indifference--a sort of pensive wistfulness habitual with her.
”You can go if you please,” she said, ”but you had much better not.”
”No!” he exclaimed.
”No,” she repeated. ”Because, John--because I love you.”