Part 6 (1/2)

Eleanor, equally of course, made her escape at once from my arm, but I still held her hand as I went on. ”Do--do believe me. I love you and no one else.” She seemed too much astonished to say anything. ”Could you not love me a little?”

She looked at me still surprised and incredulous. ”You can't mean it--you don't know what you are saying.”

I remember feeling well satisfied with myself, for doing the thing so exactly according to the models in all dramas of polite society; but Eleanor, it must be owned, was terribly astray in her part. I went on with increasing energy. ”Plainly, Eleanor, will you be my wife? Will you let me show what it is to be loved?”

Poor Eleanor twisted her damp little handkerchief round and round in her restless fingers without speaking for a moment, and then said in a frightened whisper, ”I--I don't know.”

I tried to take her hand again, but she drew it away, and said shyly, ”Indeed I don't know. I never dreamed of any one's loving me, much less you. I don't know how I ought to feel.”

”Have you never thought how you would feel if you loved anyone?” I asked, her childish simplicity making me smile, and I felt as if I were talking to a little girl; but, to my surprise, she blushed deeply, and then answered firmly, as if bound to be truthful, ”Yes! I have felt--all girls have their dreams”; here a something in her tone made her seem to have grown a woman in a moment; ”I thought I should never find any real person to make my romance about, and so for a long time I have loved Sir Philip Sidney.”

”What?”

”Because he would have been too much of a gentleman to mind how plain and insignificant I was; it isn't likely he would have loved me--but I should not have minded his knowing that I loved him.”

”And do you think that there are no gentlemen now?”

As I looked at her, the surprise and interest roused by her words making me forget for a moment the position in which we stood, I saw a sudden eager look rise in her eyes, then fade away as quickly as it came; but it showed that if no one could call Eleanor beautiful, it might be possible to forget that she was plain. She walked along slowly under the broad fir boughs, and I by her side, both silent. She was frightened at having said so much. But as we drew near the gate which opened to the public road, I said, ”Will you not give me my answer, Eleanor?”

”I cannot,” she murmured, ”it is so sudden. Can you not give me a little time to think about it?”

”Till this evening?”

”No--no. I have no time before then. Come to-morrow morning--after church begins, and I will be at home--that is,” she added apologetically, ”if it is just as convenient to you.”

Poor child! she did not know what it was to use her power, in caprice or earnest, over a lover. Every word she said was like a fresh appeal to me. I told her it should be as she wished, and but little else pa.s.sed till we reached her father's door, which closed between us, to our common relief.

Instead of appearing at the Days' tea-table, which indeed I forgot, I walked straight to the darkest and remotest nook in the fir-wood, flung myself flat on the ground, and tried to face my utterly amazing position, and to realise what I had been about. It was evident that I had irrevocably pledged myself to marry Eleanor Beecher, but still I could hardly believe it. It seemed too absurd that I, who had been proof against the direct attacks of so many pretty girls, and the more delicate allurements of the prettiest one I knew, should have been such a fool as to blurt out a proposal because a plain one had shed a few tears, which, to do her justice, were shed utterly without the design of producing any effect on me.

In this there lay a ray of hope. Eleanor, I had fully recognised, was transparently sincere; if she did not love me, I was sure she would tell me so frankly; and, after all, should I not be a conceited fool to think that every girl I saw must fall in love with me? If she refused me, as she very likely would, I should be very glad to have given her the chance; it would give her a little self-esteem, of which she seemed more dest.i.tute than a girl ought to be, and it would not diminish mine. I felt more interest in her than I could have thought possible two hours ago, but I did not love her, and did not want to marry her. I did not feel that we were at all suited to each other, and I hoped that she would have the good sense to see it too; and yet, would she--would she?

Next day at a quarter past eleven I ascended the Beecher doorsteps in all the elegance of array that befitted the occasion, and, I hope, no unbecoming bearing. I had had a sleepless night of it, but had reasoned the matter out with myself, and decided that if I had done a foolish thing, I must take the consequences like a man, and see that they ended with me. Eleanor herself opened the door and showed me into the stiff little drawing-room, which had to be stiff or it would have been hopelessly shabby at once. The family were at church, and it was the only time in the week that she could have had any chance to see me alone. She had made, it was plain, a great effort to look well, and was looking very well for her. She had put on a fresh, though old, white frock, had stuck a white rose in her belt, and done up her hair in a way I had never seen it in before. She looked very nervous and frightened, but not unbecomingly so, I allowed, though with rather a sinking of the heart at the way these straws drifted. We got through the few polite nothings that people exchange on all occasions, from christenings to funerals, and then I said:

”Dear Eleanor, I hope you have thought over what I said to you yesterday, and that you know how you really feel, and can--that you can love me enough to let you make me--to let me try to make you--I mean--”

I was blundering terribly now, and getting very red. Yesterday's fluency had quite deserted me. But Eleanor was thinking too much of what she had to say herself to heed it.

”Oh!” she began, ”I am afraid--I know I am not worthy of you. It was all so sudden and so unexpected yesterday. But I know now that I do not love you as much as I ought--as you deserve to be loved by the woman you love. I ought to say that I will not marry you--but--” she looked up beseechingly--”I can't--I can't.”

She paused, then went on in a trembling voice, ”You don't know how hard a time my father and mother have had. There has hardly a single pleasant thing ever happened to them. Ever since I was a little girl I have longed and longed to do something for them--something that would really make them happy--and I never could. I never dreamed I should have such a chance as this! and then all the others! I have thought so what I should like to give them, and I never had the smallest thing; and then myself--I don't want to make myself out more unselfish than I am--but you don't know how little pleasure I have had in my life. I never thought of such a chance as this--all the good things in life offered me at once--and I cannot--cannot let them go by.”

She stopped, breathless, only for a moment, but it was a bitter one for me. I had one of those agonising sudden glimpses such as come but seldom, of the irony of fate, when the whole tragedy of our lives lies bare and exposed before us in all its ugliness. So then even she, for whom I was giving up so much, could not love me, and I was going to be married for my money after all! Then with another electric shock of instant quick perception, it came across me that I was getting perhaps a better, certainly a rarer, thing than love. Many women had flattered my vanity with hints of that; but here was the only one I had ever met whom I was sure was telling me the absolute, unflattering truth. The sting of wounded pride grew milder as Eleanor, unconsciously swaying toward me in her earnestness, went on:

”Will you--can you love me, and take my friends.h.i.+p, my grat.i.tude and admiration--more than I can tell you--and wait for me to love you as well as you ought to be loved? I know I shall--how can I help it?”

As things in our family were always done with the strictest attention to etiquette, I informed my mother, as was due to her, during our usual stroll on the terrace, after our early Sunday dinner, that I was paying my addresses to Eleanor Beecher, and intended to apply for her father's consent that afternoon. It was a great and not a pleasant surprise for her. My mother was celebrated for never saying anything she would be sorry for afterwards--an admirable trait, but one which frequently interfered with her conversational powers; and unfortunately, on this occasion, to say nothing was almost as bad as anything she could have said. It was rather hard for both of us, but after it was over, she could go to her room and have a good cry by herself, while I was obliged to set off for an interview with my intended father-in-law, whom I found in his little garden, in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves and old slippers, cutting the ripest bunches from his grape-vines. It was the blessed hour sacred to dawdle--the only one the poor old fellow had from one week's end to the other. He was evidently not accustomed to have it broken in upon by young men visitors in faultless calling trim, and starting, dropped his shears, which I picked up and handed to him; dropped them again, shuffled about in his old slippers, and muttered something of an apology. Evidently I must plunge at once into the subject, but I was getting practised in this, and began boldly: ”Mr. Beecher, may I have your consent to pay my addresses to your daughter Eleanor?”

”Eleanor at home? Oh, yes, she's in. Perhaps you'll kindly excuse me?”

and he looked helplessly toward the house door.

”I don't think you quite understand me. I spoke to Eleanor last night about my wishes--hopes--my love for her, and she promised to give me an answer this morning. She has consented to become my wife--of course, with your approval.”