AN INVALID.
How do I love thee? Let me count the sums.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height,
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace----
When, a month later, Sutton was carried into Dustypore, he was, as any
one would have felt, a fit subject for romance, and Maud was just in the
mood to appreciate all that was romantic about him to the full. She had
been thinking about this event and fancying it, and dreaming about it
for weeks past, poor child, till it had become for her the very climax
of existence. As the time for its realisation drew near she had been
haunted by nervous apprehensions as to whether she had not
misinterpreted Sutton's words of kindness at that last interview, and
whether the moment of disillusionment might not be now arriving. Sutton,
so a morbid mood suggested, might have meant nothing; or his words,
perhaps, proved only a passing tenderness, engendered by the special
circumstances of the hour: her fancy, perhaps, had dressed up a few
careless expressions into something serious. But there came a truer
voice which said that it was not so; that Sutton was not a man of
careless words or a transient mood, and that a pledge had been given,
though without actual spoken vow, which he assuredly would redeem on his
return. On the whole then, though not absolutely without a misgiving,
Maud was joyous and courageous, and her heart was light within her. She,
however, felt herself becoming greatly embarrassed and excited as the
hour of Sutton's arrival drew near. The most needless blushes came
flushing into her cheeks; the simplest things seemed difficult to
answer. Felicia knew, Maud was certain, pretty well how matters stood;
knew at any rate that there was something between her and Sutton: yet
Maud had never summoned up courage to inform her what it was, nor had
Felicia chosen to inquire. It was rather agitating, accordingly, that
Felicia should now be about to have an opportunity of judging for
herself how matters stood.
Then Sutton arrived, too suffering from his wound to be moved except in
a palanquin; and was got, with a great deal of trouble and pain
apparently, to the sofa in Vernon's study, which was turned into his
sitting-room for the time being, and where the invalid was to spend the
day. Here he lay, a close prisoner, as feeble as a bad wound and a
month's fever could make him, and quite in a condition for judicious
nursing. A man in such a plight wants company--pleasant, gentle,
noiseless, unexciting, feminine if possible; he wants to be read to, and
sung and played to; he wants cooling drinks, which, when mixed and
administered by a hand like Felicia's, are more than nectar; he wants
those delicious idle gossips, for which the healthy busy side of life so
seldom provides either the opportunity or the mood. If a man lack these,
an illness is a dreary affair; if he has them, it may bring him the
pleasantest hours of his life.
All these pleasant conditions now attended the fortunate Sutton's
convalescence. Felicia welcomed him with a joyful cordiality and devoted
herself with enthusiasm to the task of making his imprisonment as little
wearisome as might be. Vernon stole an hour from his office to read him
the 'Pall Mall Gazette;' Maud found herself busy with the rest, a
willing attendant on the happy warrior in his hour of weakness.
Everybody made a great deal of him. Felicia's little girls, coming with
much modesty and many blushes, brought him a nosegay apiece and kissed
his hand with a sort of affectionate reverence. His face was wan and
thin, and marked with lines of suffering; but the sweet, kind smile was
still the same, and the honest eyes and finely-chiselled brow. On the
whole Maud found him handsomer and ten times more touching than ever
before. She knew, too, before they had been a minute in each other's
company that all was well with her. The time of separation, uncertainty,
distress, was done: happiness, greater than she had ever dreamed of, was
already hers. Her foot stood already on the crowning ridge of existence,
and all the horizon blazed with the golden clouds of Hope and Joy.
One effect that Sutton always had upon her she was especially conscious
of just now: she had no feeling of shyness with him, such as she felt
with all the world beside; he stirred her being too profoundly for any
slighter feeling to find a place. Shyness deals with the superficial,
slighter outcomings of life. Sutton seemed to transport her to another
world of thought and feeling: thoughts too high and feelings too intense
to heed the mode of their expression. The consequence was, that it
seemed quite natural to Maud for her to be waiting on him; who had so
good a right as she to that pleasant duty?
Then presently Felicia went away with the children, and the two were
again, for the first time, alone together.
'Come,' Sutton said, changing his manner instantly, 'sit down by me and
tell me all that has happened since we parted on the mountain's side.
You missed me a little, I hope?'
'Yes,' said Maud, simply, looking at him with fearless, trusting eyes;
'your going was the end of all our pleasure--we went away to the Gully,
and then came your accident and some dreadful days of anxiety. Since
then everything has seemed a sort of dream.'
'It has seemed a dream to me sometimes,' said Sutton, 'as I lay and
wondered whether the happiness I fancied for myself was real or fable.
Things befall one so suddenly in life, and strokes of good or ill
fortune take one so by surprise, that one distrusts one's own belief
about them, and cannot fancy that the old life which went before has
been all transfigured. Now, however, that I see you and hear you and
have you about me, I begin to feel it was not a dream after all.'
'It was no dream,' said Maud, in her serious way; 'here is your locket,
which I have been keeping for you since we parted.'
'No,' said the other, giving back the proffered locket and keeping the
hand which gave it in captivity; 'you shall keep it now, if you will,
for good and all; that is, if you have a fancy for an old soldier,
wounded and battered as you see me. Here I shall be for weeks, I
suppose, a burden on the friends who are good-natured enough to be my
nurses. You will have to tend me, as Elaine did Launcelot in his cave.'
'I will,' Maud said, wrapped into a mood which left her scarcely
mistress of herself; 'my love is as great as hers was. I have been
living all these weeks only that I might see you again. I must have died
if you had not come back, or come back other than I hoped.'
The die was cast--the words were spoken; they came out naturally,
spontaneously, almost unconsciously before Maud had time to know what
she was about, or to judge of the wisdom and propriety of what she was
saying. They were the truth; they were what she had been feeling and
saying to herself for weeks past; they were the true outcoming of her
honest heart; and yet no sooner were they spoken than Maud felt an awful
conviction that they had better have been left unsaid; they were more,
far more, than anything which had been said on Sutton's part to her. Was
it wrong, unwomanly, indecorous, thus to have declared herself and torn
the veil from her feelings without waiting for a lover's hand to remove
it? The thought rushed in upon her with an agonizing distinctness; the
blood came rushing to her cheeks and forehead; her very hand which
Sutton was holding in his own, emaciated and bloodless, was blushing
too. She could say nothing, she could do nothing but stay, helpless,
having made her confession, and wait for Sutton to rescue her.
As he lay there, holding her hand in his, clasping it with a firm,
tender grasp, which seemed to be expressive of all she wanted, Felicia
came into the room. Maud stood there, scarlet, and moved not, nor did
Sutton seem inclined that she should.
'Felicia,' he said, 'you are the good angel of us both, and this moment
would have been incomplete without you. Maud has just consented to
become my wife.'
Felicia took Maud to her arms in a sort of rapture of happiness; her
heart was too full for speech. It was a delightful relief from the
anxiety and distress which had been weighing upon her all the summer and
which had of late grown into an acute pang. She felt grateful to both
parties, who had at last brought about the result for which she had
wished so anxiously and of which she had somehow begun to despair.
Maud, on her part, felt it natural that Sutton should, at a trying
emergency, have protected her skilfully, considerately, efficiently from
the embarrassment into which her outspokenness had betrayed her; it was
like himself to do so, and typical of the sort of feeling of confidence
with which he always inspired her. There was a delightful sense of
safety and protection in being with him. How should her heart not beat
high at the thought that this safety and protection would evermore be
hers!