Volume Ii Part 37 (1/2)
It was not the cry of his first love for her. It was a cry under which she shuddered. But she submitted at once. Nay, with a womanly tenderness--how unlike that old shrinking Laura--she threw her arm round his neck, she buried her little head in his breast.
”Oh, how long you were in understanding!” she said with a deep sigh. ”How long!”
”Laura!--what does it mean?--my head turns!”
”It means--it means--that you shall never--never again speak to me as you did yesterday; that either you must love me or--well, I must just die!”
she gave a little sharp sobbing laugh. ”I have tried other things--and they can't--they can't be borne. And if you can't love me unless I am a Catholic--now, I know you wouldn't--I must just _be_ a Catholic--if any power in the world can make me one. Why, Father Leadham can persuade me--he must!” She drew away from him, holding him, almost fiercely, by her two small hands. ”I am nothing but an ignorant, foolish girl. And he has persuaded so many wise people--you have often told me. Oh, he must--he must persuade me!”
She hid herself again on his breast. Then she looked up, feeling the tears on his cheek.
”But you'll be very, very patient with me--won't you? Oh! I'm so dead to all those things! But if I say whatever you want me to say--if I do what is required of me--you won't ask me too many questions--you won't press me too hard? You'll trust to my being yours--to my growing into your heart? Oh! how did I ever bear the agony of tearing myself away!”
It was an ecstasy--a triumph. But it seemed to him afterwards in looking back upon it, that all through it was also an anguis.h.!.+ The revelation of the woman's nature, of all that had lived and burned in it since he last held her in his arms, brought with it for both of them such sharp pains of expansion, such an agony of experience and growth.
Very soon, however, she grew calmer. She tried to tell him what had happened to her since that black October day. But conversation was not altogether easy. She had to rush over many an hour and many a thought--dreading to remember. And again and again he could not rid himself of the image of the old Laura, or could not fathom the new. It was like stepping from the firmer ground of the moss on to the softer patches where foot and head lost themselves. He could see her as she had been, or as he had believed her to be, up to twenty-four hours before--the little enemy and alien in the house; or as she had lived beside him those four months--troubled, petulant, exacting. But this radiant, tender Laura--with this touch of feverish extravagance in her love and her humiliation--she bewildered him; or rather she roused a new response; he must learn new ways of loving her.
Once, as he was holding her hand, she looked at him timidly.
”You would have left Bannisdale, wouldn't you?”
He quickly replied that he had been in correspondence with his old Jesuit friends. But he would not dwell upon it. There was a kind of shame in the subject, that he would not have had her penetrate. A devout Catholic does not dwell for months on the prospects and secrets of the religious life to put them easily and in a moment out of his hand--even at the call of the purest and most legitimate pa.s.sion. From the Counsels, the soul returns to the Precepts. The higher, supremer test is denied it. There is humbling in that--a bitter taste, not to be escaped.
Perhaps she did penetrate it. She asked him hurriedly if he regretted anything. She could so easily go away again--for ever. ”I could do it--I could do it now!” she said firmly. ”Since you kissed me. You could always be my friend.”
He smiled, and raised her hands to his lips. ”Where thou livest, dear, I will live, and where----”
She withdrew a hand, and quickly laid it on his mouth.
”No--not to-night! We have been so full of death all these weeks! Oh! how I want to tell Augustina!”
But she did not move. She could not tear herself from this comfortless room--this strange circle of melancholy light in which they sat--this beating of the rain in their ears as it dashed against the old and fragile cas.e.m.e.nts.
”Oh! my dear,” he said suddenly as he watched her, ”I have grown so old and cross. And so poor! It has taken far more than the picture”--he pointed to the vacant s.p.a.ce--”to carry me through this six months. My schemes have been growing--what motive had I for holding my hand? My friends have often remonstrated--the Jesuits especially. But at last I have had my way. I have far--far less to offer you than I had before.”
He looked at her in a sad apology.
”I have a little money,” she said shyly. ”I don't believe you ever knew it before.”
”Have you?” he said in astonishment.
”Just a tiny bit. I shall pay my way”--and she laughed happily.
”Alan!--have you noticed--how well I have been getting on with the Sisters?--what friends Father Leadham and I made? But no!--you didn't notice anything. You saw me all _en noir_--_all_” she repeated with a mournful change of voice.
Then her eyelids fell, and she s.h.i.+vered.
”Oh! how you hurt--how you _hurt_!--last night.”
He pa.s.sionately soothed her, denouncing himself, asking her pardon. She gave a long sigh. She had a strange sense of having climbed a long stair out of an abyss of misery. Now she was just at the top--just within light and welcome. But the dark was so close behind--one touch! and she was thrust down to it again.