The weeks that followed were a time for Howard of very singular
happiness--happiness of a quality of which he had not thought himself
capable, and in the very existence of which he was often hardly able to
believe. He had never known what intimate affection was before; and it
was strange to him, when he had always been able to advance so swiftly
in his relations with others to a point of frankness and even
brotherliness, to discover that there was a whole world of emotion
beyond that. He was really deeply reserved and reticent; but he
admitted even comparative strangers so easily and courteously to his
house of life, that few suspected the existence of a secret chamber of
thought, with an entrance contrived behind the pictured arras, which
was the real fortress of his inner existence, and where he sate
oftenest to contemplate the world. That chamber of thought was a place
of few beliefs and fewer certainties; if he adopted, as he was
accustomed to do, conventional language and conventional ideas, it was
only to feel himself in touch with his fellows; for Howard's mind was
really a place of suspense and doubt; his scepticism went down to the
very roots of life; his imagination was rich and varied, but he did not
trust his hopes or even his fears; all that he was certain of was just
the actual passage of his thought and his emotion; he formed no views
about the future, and he abandoned the past as one might abandon the
debris of the mine.
It was delicious to him to be catechised, questioned, explored by Maud,
to have his reserve broken through and his reticence disregarded; but
what oftenest brought the great fact of his love home to him with an
overpowering certainty of joy was the girl's eager caresses and
endearing gestures. Howard had always curiously shrunk from physical
contact with his fellows; he had an almost childishly observant eye,
and his senses were abnormally alert; little bodily defects and
uglinesses had been a horror to him; and the way in which Maud would
seek his embrace, clasp his hand, lay her cheek to his, as if nestling
home, gave him an enraptured sense of delight that transcended all
experience. He was at first in these talks very tender of what he
imagined her to believe; but he found that this did not in the least
satisfy her, and he gradually opened his mind more and more to her
fearless view.
"Are you certain of nothing?" she asked him one day, half mirthfully.
"Yes, of one thing," he said, "of YOU! You are the only real and
perfect thing and thought in the world to me--I have always been alone
hitherto," he added, "and you have come near to me out of the deep--a
shining spirit!"
Howard never tired of questioning her in these days as to how her love
for him had arisen.
"That is the mystery of mysteries!" he said to her once; "what was it
in me or about me to make you care?"
Maud laughed. "Why, you might as well ask a man at a shop," she said,
"which particular coin it was that induced him to part with his
wares--it's just the price! Why, I cared for you, I think, before I
ever saw you, before I ever heard of you; one thinks--I suppose
everyone thinks--that there must be one person in the world who is
waiting for one--and it seems to me now as if I had always known it was
you; and then Jack talked about you, and then you came; and that was
enough, though I didn't dare to think you could care for me; and then
how miserable I was when you began by seeming to take an interest in
me, and then it all drifted away, and I could do nothing to hold it.
Howard, why DID you do that?"
"Oh, don't ask me, darling," he said. "I thought--I thought--I don't
know what I did think; but I somehow felt it would be like putting a
bird that had sate to sing to me into a cage, if I tried to capture
you; and yet I felt it was my only chance. I felt so old. Why you must
remember that I was a grown-up man and at work, when you were in long
clothes. And think of the mercy of this--if I had come here, as I ought
to have done, and had known you as a little girl, you would have become
a sort of niece to me, and all this could never have happened--it would
all have been different."
"Well, we won't think of THAT," said Maud decisively. "I was rather a
horrid little girl, and I am glad you didn't see me in that stage!"
One day he found her a little sad, and she confessed to having had a
melancholy dream. "It was a big place, like a square in a town, full of
people," she said. "You came down some steps, looking unhappy, and went
about as if you were looking for me; and I could not attract your
attention, or get near you; once you passed quite close to me and our
eyes met, and I saw you did not recognise me, but passed on."
Howard laughed. "Why, child," he said, "I can't see anyone else but you
when we are in the same room together--my faculty of observation has
deserted me. I see every movement you make, I feel every thought you
think; you have bewitched me! Your face comes between me and my work;
you will quite ruin my career. How can I go back to my tiresome boys
and my old friends?"
"Ah, I don't want to do THAT!" said Maud. "I won't be a hindrance; you
must just hang me up like a bird in a cage--that's what I am--to sing
to you when you are at leisure."