"I found him; he's mine. I won't let him go."
He stirred a little before they came back with the hurdle, and she took
his uninjured hand, and pressed it firmly and kindly, and told him it
was "all right," he would feel better presently.
She did have him carried home, and when the doctor had set the arm and
the collar-bone, and had owned that it would be better not to move him
at present, she knew that her romance would not be cut short just yet.
She did not nurse him, because it is only in books that young girls of
the best families act as sick-nurses to gentlemen. But her mother--dear,
kind, clever, foolish gentlewoman--did the nursing, and the daughter
gathered flowers daily to brighten his room. And when he was better, yet
still not well enough to resume the bicycle tour so sharply interrupted
by a flawed nut, she read to him, and talked to him, and sat with him in
the hushed August garden. Up to this point, observe, her interest had
been purely romantic. He was a man of forty-five. Perhaps he had a
younger brother, a splendid young man, and the brother would like her
because she had been kind. _He_ had lived long abroad, had no relatives
in England. He knew her Cousin Reginald at Johannesburg--everyone knew
everyone else out there. The brother--there really was a brother--would
come some day to thank her mother for all her goodness, and she would be
at the window and look down, and he would look up, and the lamp of life
would be lighted. She longed, with heart-whole earnestness, to be in
love with someone, for as yet she was only in love with love.
But on the evening when there was a full moon--the time of madness as
everybody knows--her mother falling asleep after dinner in her cushioned
chair in the lamp lit drawing-room, he and she wandered out into the
garden. They sat on the seat under the great apple tree. He was talking
gently of kindness and gratitude, and of how he would soon be well
enough to go away. She listened in silence, and presently he grew
silent, too, under the spell of the moonlight. She never knew exactly
how it was that he took her hand, but he was holding it gently,
strongly, as if he would never let it go. Their shoulders touched. The
silence grew deeper and deeper. She sighed involuntarily; not because
she was unhappy, but because her heart was beating so fast. Both were
looking straight before them into the moonlight. Suddenly he turned, put
his other hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the lips. At that
instant her mother called her, and she went into the lamp-light. She
said good night at once. She wanted to be alone, to realise the great
and wonderful awakening of her nature, its awakening to love--for this
was love, the love the poets sang about--
"A kiss, a touch, the charm, was snapped."
She wanted to be alone to think about him. But she did not think. She
hugged to her heart the physical memory of that strong magnetic
hand-clasp, the touch of those smooth sensitive lips on hers--held it
close to her till she fell asleep, still thrilling with the ecstasy of
her first lover's kiss.
Next day they were formally engaged, and now her life became an
intermittent delirium. She longed always to be alone with him, to touch
his hands, to feel his cheek against hers. She could not understand the
pleasure which he said he felt in just sitting near her and watching
her sewing or reading, as he sat talking to her mother of dull
things--politics, and the war, and landscape gardening. If she had been
a man, she said to herself, always far down in her heart, she would have
found a way to sit near the beloved, so that at least hands might meet
now and then unseen. But he disliked public demonstrations, and he loved
her. She, however, was merely in love with him.
That was why, when he went away, she found it so difficult to write to
him. She thought his letters cold, though they told her of all his work,
his aims, ambitions, hopes, because not more than half a page was filled
with lover's talk. He could have written very different letters--indeed,
he had written such in his time, and to more than one address; but he
was wise with the wisdom of forty years, and he was beginning to tremble
for her happiness, because he loved her.
When she complained that his letters were cold he knew that he had been
wise. She found it very difficult to write to him. It was far easier to
write to Cousin Reginald, who always wrote such long, interesting
letters, all about interesting things--Cousin Reginald who had lived
with them at the White House till a year ago, and who knew all the
little family jokes, and the old family worries.
They had been engaged for eight months when he came down to see her
without any warning letter.
She was alone in the drawing-room when he was announced, and with a cry
of joy, she let fall her work on the floor, and ran to meet him with
arms outstretched. He caught her wrists.
"No," he said, and the light of joy in her face made it not easy to say
it. "My dear, I've come to say something to you, and I mustn't kiss you
till I've said it."
The light had died out.
"You're not tired of me?"
He laughed. "No, not tired of you, my little princess, but I am going
away for a year. If you still love me when I come back we'll be married.
But before I go I must say something to you."
Her eyes were streaming with tears.
"Oh, how can you be so cruel?" she said, and her longing to cling to
him, to reassure herself by personal contact, set her heart beating
wildly.
"I don't want to be cruel," he said; "you understand, dear, that I love
you, and it's just because I love you that I must say it. Now sit down
there and let me speak. Don't interrupt me if you can help it. Consider
it a sort of lecture you're bound to sit through."
He pushed her gently towards a chair. She sat down sulkily, awkwardly,
and he stood by the window, looking out at the daffodils and early
tulips.
"Dear, I am afraid I have found something out. I don't think you love
me--"
"Oh, how can you, how can you?"
"Be patient," he said. "I've wondered almost from the first. You're
almost a child, and I'm an old man--oh, no, I don't mean that that's any
reason why you shouldn't love me, but it's a reason for my making very
sure that you _do_ before I let you marry me. It's your happiness I have
to think of most. Now shall I just go away for a year, or shall I speak
straight out and tell you everything? If your father were alive I would
try to tell him; I can't tell your mother, she wouldn't understand. You
can understand. Shall I tell you?"
"Yes," she said, looking at him with frightened eyes.
"Well: look back. You think you love me. Haven't my letters always bored
you a little, though they were about all the things I care for most?"
"I don't understand politics," she said sullenly.
"And I don't understand needle-work, but I could sit and watch you sew
for ever and a day."
"Well, go on. What other crime have I committed besides not going into
raptures over Parliament?"
She was growing angry, and he was glad. It is not so easy to hurt people
when they are angry.
"And when I am talking to your mother, that bores you too, and when we
are alone, you don't care to talk of anything, but--but--"
This task was harder than he had imagined possible.
"I've loved you too much, and I've shown it too plainly," she said
bitterly.
"My dear, you've never loved me at all. You have only been in love with
me."
"And isn't that the same thing?"
"Oh! it's no use," he said, "I must _be_ a brute then. No, it's not the
same thing. It's your poets and novelists who pretend it is. It's they
who have taught you all wrong. It's only half of love, and the worst
half, the most untrustworthy, the least lasting. My little girl, when I
kissed you first, you were just waking up to your womanhood, you were
ready for love, as a flower-bud is ready for sunshine, and I happened to
be the first man who had the chance to kiss you and hold your dear
little hands."
"Do you mean that I should have liked anyone else as well if he had only
been kind enough to kiss me?"
"No, no; but ... I wish girls were taught these things out of books. If
you only knew what it costs me to be honest with you, how I have been
tempted to let you marry me and chance everything! Don't you see you're
a woman now--women were made to be kissed, and when a man behaves like a
brute and kisses a girl without even asking first, or finding out first
whether she loves him, it's not fair on the girl. I shall never forgive
myself. Don't you see I took part of you by storm, the part of you that
is just woman nature, not yours but everyone's; and how were you to know
that you didn't love me, that it was only the awakening of your woman
nature?"
"I hate you," she said briefly.
"Yes," he answered simply, "I knew you would. Hate is only one step from
passion."
She rose in a fury. "How dare you use that word to me!" she cried. "Oh,
you are a brute! You are quite right: I don't love you--I hate you, I
despise you. Oh, you brute!"
"Don't," he said; "I only used that word because it's what people call
the thing when it's a man who feels it. With you it's what I said, the
unconscious awakening of the womanhood God gave you. Try to forgive me.
Have I said anything so very dreadful? It's a very little thing, dear,
the sweet kindness you've felt for me. It's nothing to be ashamed or
angry about. It's not a hundredth part of what I have felt when you have
kissed me. It's because it's such a poor foundation to build a home on
that I am frightened for you. Suppose you got tired of my kisses, and
there was nothing more in me that you did care for. And that sort of ...
lover's love doesn't last for ever--without the other kind of love--"
"Oh, don't say any more," she cried, jumping up from her chair. "I did
love you with all my heart. I was sorry for you. I thought you were so
different. Oh, how could you say these things to me? Go!"
"Shall I come back in a year?" he asked, smiling rather sadly.
"Come back? _Never!_ I'll never speak to you again. I'll never see you
again. I hope to God I shall never hear your name again. Go at once!"
"You'll be grateful to me some day," he said, "when you've found out
that love and being in love are not the same thing."
"What is love, then? The kind of love _you'd_ care for?"
"I care for it all," he said. "I think love is tenderness, esteem,
affection, interest, pity, protection, and passion. Yes, you needn't be
frightened by the word; it is the force that moves the world, but it's
only a part of love. Oh, I see it's no good. God bless you, child:
you'll understand some day!"
She does understand now; she has married her Cousin Reginald, and she
understands deeply and completely. But she only admits this in that
deep, shadowy, almost disowned corner of her heart. In the reception
room of her mind she still thinks of her first lover as "That Brute!"