Eric noticed a change in Kilmeny at their next meeting--a change that
troubled him. She seemed aloof, abstracted, almost ill at ease. When he
proposed an excursion to the orchard he thought she was reluctant to go.
The days that followed convinced him of the change. Something had come
between them. Kilmeny seemed as far away from him as if she had in
truth, like her namesake of the ballad, sojourned for seven years in the
land “where the rain never fell and the wind never blew,” and had come
back washed clean from all the affections of earth.
Eric had a bad week of it; but he determined to put an end to it by
plain speaking. One evening in the orchard he told her of his love.
It was an evening in August, with wheat fields ripening to their
harvestry--a soft violet night made for love, with the distant murmur of
an unquiet sea on a rocky shore sounding through it. Kilmeny was sitting
on the old bench where he had first seen her. She had been playing for
him, but her music did not please her and she laid aside the violin with
a little frown.
It might be that she was afraid to play--afraid that her new emotions
might escape her and reveal themselves in music. It was difficult
to prevent this, so long had she been accustomed to pour out all her
feelings in harmony. The necessity for restraint irked her and made of
her bow a clumsy thing which no longer obeyed her wishes. More than ever
at that instant did she long for speech--speech that would conceal and
protect where dangerous silence might betray.
In a low voice that trembled with earnestness Eric told her that he
loved her--that he had loved her from the first time he had seen her
in that old orchard. He spoke humbly but not fearfully, for he believed
that she loved him, and he had little expectation of any rebuff.
“Kilmeny, will you be my wife?” he asked finally, taking her hands in
his.
Kilmeny had listened with averted face. At first she had blushed
painfully but now she had grown very pale. When he had finished speaking
and was waiting for her answer, she suddenly pulled her hands away, and,
putting them over her face, burst into tears and noiseless sobs.
“Kilmeny, dearest, have I alarmed you? Surely you knew before that I
loved you. Don’t you care for me?” Eric said, putting his arm about her
and trying to draw her to him. But she shook her head sorrowfully, and
wrote with compressed lips,
“Yes, I do love you, but I will never marry you, because I cannot
speak.”
“Oh, Kilmeny,” said Eric smiling, for he believed his victory won, “that
doesn’t make any difference to me--you know it doesn’t, sweetest. If you
love me that is enough.”
But Kilmeny only shook her head again. There was a very determined look
on her pale face. She wrote,
“No, it is not enough. It would be doing you a great wrong to marry you
when I cannot speak, and I will not do it because I love you too much to
do anything that would harm you. Your world would think you had done
a very foolish thing and it would be right. I have thought it all over
many times since something Aunt Janet said made me understand, and I
know I am doing right. I am sorry I did not understand sooner, before
you had learned to care so much.”
“Kilmeny, darling, you have taken a very absurd fancy into that dear
black head of yours. Don’t you know that you will make me miserably
unhappy all my life if you will not be my wife?”
“No, you think so now; and I know you will feel very badly for a time.
Then you will go away and after awhile you will forget me; and then you
will see that I was right. I shall be very unhappy, too, but that is
better than spoiling your life. Do not plead or coax because I shall not
change my mind.”
Eric did plead and coax, however--at first patiently and smilingly,
as one might argue with a dear foolish child; then with vehement and
distracted earnestness, as he began to realize that Kilmeny meant what
she said. It was all in vain. Kilmeny grew paler and paler, and her eyes
revealed how keenly she was suffering. She did not even try to argue
with him, but only listened patiently and sadly, and shook her head. Say
what he would, entreat and implore as he might, he could not move her
resolution a hairs-breadth.
Yet he did not despair; he could not believe that she would adhere to
such a resolution; he felt sure that her love for him would eventually
conquer, and he went home not unhappily after all. He did not understand
that it was the very intensity of her love which gave her the strength
to resist his pleading, where a more shallow affection might have
yielded. It held her back unflinchingly from doing him what she believed
to be a wrong.