‘I have not been always what I ought to have been,’ he said, ‘you must
understand that, Grace. I can’t let you take me without telling you,
though it’s against myself. I have not been the man that your husband
ought to be, that is the truth.’
She smiled upon him with all the tenderness of which her eyes were
capable, which was saying much, and pressed the hands which held hers.
They had just, after many difficulties and embarrassments and delay,
said to each other all that people say when, from being strangers, they
become one and conclude to part no more. They were standing together in
all the joyful agitation and excitement which accompany this
explanation--their hearts beating high, their faces illuminated by the
radiance of the delight which is always a surprise to the true lover,
even when to others it has been most certain and evident. Their friends
had known for weeks that this was what it was coming to; but he was pale
with the ineffable discovery that she loved him, and she all-enveloped
in the very bloom of a blush for pure wonder of this extraordinary
certainty that he loved her. She looked at him and smiled, their clasped
hands changing their action for the moment, she pressing his in token of
utmost confidence as his hitherto had pressed hers.
‘I do not mean only that I do not deserve you, which is what any man
would say,’ he resumed, after the unspoken yet unmistakable answer she
had made him. ‘The best man on earth might say so, and speak the truth.
No man is good enough for such as you; but I mean more than that.’
‘You mean flattery,’ she said, ‘which I would not listen to for a moment
if it were not sweeter to listen to than anything else in the world. You
don’t suppose I believe that; but so long as _you_ do--’
Her hands unloosed and melted into his again, and he resumed the
pressure which became almost painful, so close it was and earnest.
‘Dear,’ he said, with his voice trembling, ‘you must not think I mean
that only. That would be so were I a better man. I mean that I am not
worthy to touch your dear hand or the hem of your garment. Oh, listen: I
have not been a good man, Grace.’
She released one of her hands and put it up softly and touched his lips.
‘All that has been is done with,’ she said, ‘for both of us--everything
has become new--’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘if you are content with that, it is so; it shall ever
be so. Yet I would not accept that peace of God without telling
you--without letting you know--’
‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘or I might have to confess, too.’
‘You,’ he cried, seizing her in his arms with a kind of rage. ‘Oh, never
name yourself in such a comparison. You don’t know, you can’t imagine--’
Once more she stopped his mouth.
‘No more, no more; we are both content in what is, and happy in what is
to come.’
‘Happy is too mild a word. It is not big enough, nor strong enough for
me.’
She smiled with the woman’s soft superiority to the man’s rapture that
makes her glad. Superiority yet inferiority, admiring, yet half
disdaining, the tide that carries him away--all for her, as if she was
worth that! proud of him for the warmth of passion of which she is not
capable, at which she shakes her head, not even he able to transport her
to such a height of emotion as that to which she, only she, no other!
can transport him. She began to be his critic and counsellor on the
moment, as soon as it had been acknowledged that she was his love, and
was to be his wife.
It had been a long wooing, much interrupted, supposed to be hopeless.
They had loved each other as boy and girl seven or eight years before.
It is to be hoped that no one will be wounded by the fact that Grace
Goodheart was twenty-five; not an innocent angel of eighteen, but a
woman who had her own opinions of the world. He was five years older.
When she was seventeen and he twenty-two there had been passages between
them which he had perhaps forgotten: but she had never forgot. At that
period they were both poor. She an orphan girl in the house of her
uncle, who was very kind to her, but announced everywhere that he did
not intend to leave her his fortune; he a young man without any very
definite intentions in life, or energy to make a way for himself. They
had parted then without anything said, for Oliver was a gentleman, and
would not spoil the future of the girl whom he could not ask to marry
him. He had gone away into the world, and he had forgotten Grace. But
there is nothing that a girl’s mind is more apt to fix upon than the
vague conclusion, which is no end, of such an episode. There is in it
something more delicate than an engagement which holds the imagination
as fast as any betrothal. He has not spoken, she thinks, for honour’s
sake. He has gone away, like a true knight, to gain fame or fortune, and
so win her: and she is consciously waiting for him for long years,
perhaps, till he comes back, following him with her heart, with her eyes
as far as she can, ever open to all that is heard of him, collecting
diligently every scrap of information. Grace had not been without her
little successes in that time; others had seen that she was sweet as
well as Oliver Wentworth; but she was so light-hearted and cheerful that
no one could say it was for Oliver’s sake, or for any reason but
because she did not choose, that she would have no one in her own
sphere. And then came that strange reversal of everything when the old
uncle died without any will, and Grace, who it was always supposed must
go out governessing at his death, was found to be his heiress. She was
his next of kin; there was nobody even to divide it with, to fight for a
share; and instead of being a little dependent orphan, she was an
heiress and a very good match. How it was that Oliver Wentworth came
back after this, was a question that many people asked; but however it
was, it was not with any mercenary thought on his part. Whether his
sister was equally disinterested, who would take no denial, but insisted
on his visit, need not, perhaps, be inquired. He had come rather against
his will, knowing no reason why Trix should be so urgent; and then he
had met Grace Goodheart, whom he had not seen for so many years, again.
To her it was a little disappointing that he came back very much as he
had gone away, without having achieved either honour or fortune. But
success is not dealt out in the same measure to every man; and if he had
failed, how much more reason for consoling him? He had only failed in
degree. He had not won either honour or fortune; but he was able to earn
his daily bread, and perhaps hers. And when he saw her again, his heart
had gone back with a bound to his first love, although in the meantime
that love had been forgotten. She was aware, more or less, of all this.
She was even aware, more or less, of what he had wanted to tell her. She
had followed him too closely with her heart not to know that he had not
always kept himself unspotted from the world. This had cost her many a
secret tear in the years which were past, but had not altered her mind
towards him. There are women who can cease to love when they discover
that a man is unworthy; indeed, it is one of the commonplaces both of
fact and fiction, that love cannot exist without respect. It would be
very well for the good people, and very ill for those who are not good,
if this were always so. There are many, many, of women, perhaps the
majority, who are not so high-minded, and who love those they love--God
help them--whether they are worthy of love or not. Grace was one of
those women. She heard, somehow--who can tell how, being intent to hear
anything she could pick up about him--that he had not kept the perfect
way. She heard that he had gone wrong, and perhaps heard no more for a
year or two, and in her secret retirement wept and prayed, but made no
outward sign; and then had heard some comforting news, and then again
had been plunged into the anguish of those who know that their beloved
are in misery and trouble, yet cannot lift a finger to help them. When
he appeared again within her ken, she knew it was a man soiled with much
contact of the world that met her, and not the pure-hearted boy of old.
But he was still Oliver Wentworth, and that was everything. And when in
honour and honesty he would have told her how unworthy he was, her
heart leapt up towards him in that glory and delight of approbation
which is perhaps the highest ecstacy of a woman. His confession, which
she would not allow him to make, was virtue and excellence to her. She
was more proud of him because he wanted to tell her that he was a
sinner, and acknowledge his unworthiness, than if he had been the most
unsullied and excellent of men.
Wentworth’s sister had always been Grace’s friend. She was older than
either of them, married, and full in the current of her own life. When
Oliver came back to her after all was settled, and made what he believed
was a revelation to her of his love and happiness, Mrs. Ford laughed in
his face, even while she shared his raptures.
‘Do you think I don’t know all that?’ she said. ‘There never was
anything so stupid as a man in love. Why, I have known it for the last
eight years, and always looked forward to this day.’ Which, perhaps, was
not quite true, and yet was true in a way. For Trix had all along loved
Grace for loving her brother, and had seen that, with such a wife,
Oliver would be all that could be desired; yet had thought it best
policy, on the whole, till Grace came into her fortune, to keep them out
of each other’s way.
‘Trix,’ he said very gravely, pulling his moustache, ‘for eight years
she has always been the first woman in the world for me.’
At which his sister, which was very unbecoming, continued to laugh. ‘The
first, perhaps, dear Noll,’ she said, ‘but we can’t deny, can we, that
there have been a few others--secondary? But you may be sure, so far as
I am concerned, Grace shall never know a word of that.’
Oliver did not take the matter so lightly. From his rapture of content
he dropped into great gravity and walked about the room pulling at his
moustache, which was a custom he had when he was thinking. ‘On the
contrary,’ he said, ‘I should have liked her to know before she took the
last step that--that I haven’t been a good fellow, Trix.’
‘Oliver, I shouldn’t like to hear any one else say so. Tom says’ (this
was her husband) ‘that you’ve always been a good fellow in spite of--’
‘In spite of what?’
‘Well, in spite of--little indiscretions,’ said Trix, looking her
brother in the face, though she coloured as she did so in spite of
herself.
‘That means--’ he said, and walked up and down and pulled his moustache
more and more. It was a long time before he added, ‘There is nothing
that makes a man feel so ashamed of himself, Trix, as to feel that a
woman like Grace--if there is anyone like her--’
‘Oh, nobody, of course!’ said his sister.
He gave her a look, half angry, half tender. ‘You are a good woman, too;
and to think that two girls like you should take a fellow at your own
estimate, and pretend to think that he is a good fellow enough after
all: as if that were all that her--her husband ought to be.’
‘Well, Noll,’ said Mrs. Ford, ‘it is better not to go into details. Very
likely we should not understand them if you did, though I am no girl,
nor is she a baby either, for the matter of that; but whatever you have
been or done, the fact is that you are just Oliver Wentworth, when all
is said: and as Oliver Wentworth is the man Grace has been fond of
almost since she was a child, and who has been my brother since ever he
was born--’
‘Strange!’ he cried, with a curious outburst, half laugh, half groan,
‘to think she should have kept thinking of me all this time, while I--’
‘Have been in love with her, and considered her all the time the first
woman in the world. You told me so just now.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s not a lie, though you may think it so. I did
feel that when I thought of--’ and here he paused and gave his sister a
guilty look.
‘When you thought of her at all; you needn’t be ashamed, Noll. That’s
the man’s way of putting it. We women all know that; but now that she is
before your eyes and you cannot help thinking of her--now it has come
all right.’
Trix too gave a laugh which was half crying; and then she dried her eyes
and came solemnly up to him with a very serious face, and caught him by
the arm and looked into his eyes.
‘Oliver, now that all that’s over, and you’re an older man and
understand that life can’t go on so; and now that you are going to marry
Grace, the woman you have always loved--Oliver, for the love of God, no
more of it now.’
He gazed at her for a moment with a flash of something like fury in his
eyes, and then flung her arm far from him with fierce indignation. ‘Do
you think I am a brute beast without understanding?’ he cried.