Effie came towards him smiling, without apprehension. The atmosphere out
of doors had not the same consciousness, the same suggestion in it which
was inside. A young man’s looks, which may be alarming within the
concentration of four walls, convey no fear and not so much impression
in the fresh wind blowing from the moors and the openness of the country
road. To be sure it was afternoon and twilight coming on, which is
always a witching hour.
He stood at the corner of the byeway waiting for her as she came along,
light-footed, in her close-fitting tweed dress, which made a dim setting
to the brightness of her countenance. She had a little basket in her
hand. She had been carrying a dainty of some kind to somebody who was
ill. The wind in her face had brightened everything, her colour, her
eyes, and even had, by a little tossing, found out some gleams of gold
in the brownness of her hair. She was altogether sweet and fair in
Fred’s eyes--a creature embodying everything good and wholesome,
everything that was simple and pure. She had a single rose in her hand,
which she held up as she advanced.
“We are not like you, we don’t get roses all the year round; but here is
one, the last,” she said, “from Uncle John’s south wall.”
It was not a highly-cultivated, scentless rose, such as the gardens at
Allonby produced by the hundred, but one that was full of fragrance,
sweet as all roses once were. The outer leaves had been a little caught
by the frost, but the heart was warm with life and sweetness. She held
it up to him, but did not give it to him, as at first he thought she was
going to do.
“I would rather have that one,” he cried, “than all the roses which we
get all the year round.”
“Because it is so sweet?” said Effie. “Yes, that is a thing that
revenges the poor folk. You can make the roses as big as a child’s head,
but for sweetness the little old ones in the cottage gardens are always
the best.”
“Everything is sweet, I think, that is native here.”
“Oh!” said Effie, with a deep breath of pleasure, taking the compliment
as it sounded, not thinking of herself in it. “I am glad to hear you say
that! for I think so too--the clover, and the heather, and the
hawthorn, and the meadow-sweet. There is a sweet-brier hedge at the
manse that Uncle John is very proud of. When it is in blossom he always
brings a little rose of it to me.”
“Then I wish I might have that rose,” the young lover said.
“From the sweet-brier? They are all dead long ago; and I cannot give you
this one, because it is the last. Does winter come round sooner here,
Mr. Dirom, than in--the South?”
What Effie meant by the South was no more than England--a country,
according to her imagination, in which the sun blazed, and where the
climate in summer was almost more than honest Scots veins could bear.
That was not Fred’s conception of the South.
He smiled in a somewhat imbecile way, and replied, “Everything is best
here. Dark, and true, and tender is the North: no, not dark, that is a
mistake of the poet. Fair, and sweet, and true--is what he ought to
have said.”
“There are many dark people as well as fair in Scotland,” said Effie;
“people think we have all yellow hair. There is Uncle John, he is dark,
and true, and tender--and our Eric. You don’t know our Eric, Mr. Dirom?”
“I hope I shall some day. I am looking forward to it. Is he like you,
Miss Effie?”
“Oh, he is dark. I was telling you: and Ronald--I think we are just
divided like other people, some fair--some----”
“And who is Ronald?--another brother?”
“Oh, no--only a friend, in the same regiment.”
Effie’s colour rose a little, not that she meant anything, for what was
Ronald to her? But yet there had been that reference of the Miss
Dempsters which she had not understood, and which somehow threw Ronald
into competition with Fred Dirom, so that Effie, without knowing it,
blushed. Then she said, with a vague idea of making up to him for some
imperceptible injury, “Have you ever gone through our little wood?”
“I am hoping,” said Fred, “that you will take me there now.”
“But the gloaming is coming on,” said Effie, “and the wind will be wild
among the trees--the leaves are half off already, and the winds seem to
shriek and tear them, till every branch shivers. In the autumn it is a
little eerie in the wood.”
“What does eerie mean? but I think I know; and nothing could be eerie,”
said Fred half to himself, “while you are there.”
Effie only half heard the words: she was opening the little postern
gate, and could at least pretend to herself that she had not heard them.
She had no apprehensions, and the young man’s society was pleasant
enough. To be worshipped is pleasant. It makes one so much more
disposed to think well of one’s self.
“Then come away,” she said, holding the gate open, turning to him with a
smile of invitation. Her bright face looked brighter against the
background of the trees, which were being dashed about against an
ominous colourless sky. All was threatening in the heavens, dark and
sinister, as if a catastrophe were coming, which made the girl’s bright
tranquil face all the more delightful. How was it that she did not see
his agitation? At the crisis of a long alarm there comes a moment when
fear goes altogether out of the mind.
If Effie had been a philosopher she might have divined that danger was
near merely from the curious serenity and quiet of her heart. The wooden
gate swung behind them. They walked into the dimness of the wood side by
side. The wind made a great sighing high up in the branches of the
fir-trees, like a sort of instrument--an Eolian harp of deeper compass
than any shrieking strings could be. The branches of the lower trees
blew about. There was neither the calm nor the sentiment that were
conformable to a love tale. On the contrary, hurry and storm were in the
air, a passion more akin to anger than to love. Effie liked those great
vibrations and the rushing flood of sound. But Fred did not hear them.
He was carried along by an impulse which was stronger than the wind.
“Miss Ogilvie,” he said, “I have been talking to your father--I have
been asking his permission---- Perhaps I should not have gone to him
first. Perhaps--It was not by my own impulse altogether. I should have
wished first to---- But it appears that here, as in foreign countries,
it is considered--the best way.”
Effie looked up at him with great surprise, her pretty eyebrows arched,
but no sense of special meaning as yet dawning in her eyes.
“My father?” she said, wondering.
Fred was not skilled in love-making. It had always been a thing he had
wished, to feel himself under the influence of a grand passion: but he
had never arrived at it till now; and all the little speeches which no
doubt he had prepared failed him in the genuine force of feeling.
He stammered a little, looked at her glowing with tremulous emotion,
then burst forth suddenly, “O Effie, forgive me; I cannot go on in that
way. This is just all, that I’ve loved you ever since that first moment
at Allonby when the room was so dark. I could scarcely see you in your
white dress. Effie! it is not that I mean to be bold, to presume--I
can’t help it. It has been from the first moment. I shall never be happy
unless--unless----”
He put his hand quickly, furtively, with a momentary touch upon hers
which held the rose, and then stood trembling to receive his sentence.
Effie understood at last. She stood still for a moment panic-stricken,
raising bewildered eyes to his. When he touched her hand she started and
drew a step away from him, but found nothing better to say than a low
frightened exclamation, “O Mr. Fred!”
“I have startled you. I know I ought to have begun differently, not to
have brought it out all at once. But how could I help it? Effie! won’t
you give me a little hope? Don’t you know what I mean? Don’t you know
what I want? O Effie! I am much older than you are, and I have been
about the world a long time, but I have never loved any one but you.”
Effie did not look at him now. She took her rose in both her hands and
fixed her eyes upon that.
“You are very kind, you are too, too---- I have done nothing that you
should think so much of me,” she said.
“Done nothing? I don’t want you to do anything; you are yourself, that
is all. I want you to let me do everything for you. Effie, you
understand, don’t you, what I mean?”
“Yes,” she said, “I think I understand: but I have not thought of it
like that. I have only thought of you as a----”
Here she stopped, and her voice sank, getting lower and lower as she
breathed out the last monosyllable. As a friend, was that what she was
going to say? And was it true? Effie was too sincere to finish the
sentence. It had not been quite as a friend: there had been something in
the air--But she was in no position to reply to this demand he made upon
her. It was true that she had not thought of it. It had been about her
in the atmosphere, that was all.
“I know,” he said, breaking in eagerly. “I did not expect you to feel as
I do. There was nothing in me to seize your attention. Oh, I am not
disappointed--I expected no more. You thought of me as a friend. Well!
and I want to be the closest of friends. Isn’t that reasonable? Only let
me go on trying to please you. Only, only try to love me a little,
Effie. Don’t you think you could like a poor fellow who wants nothing so
much as to please you?”
Fred was very much in earnest: there was a glimmer in his eyes, his face
worked a little: there was a smile of deprecating, pleading tenderness
about his mouth which made his lip quiver. He was eloquent in being so
sincere. Effie gave a furtive glance up at him and was moved. But it was
love and not Fred that moved her. She was profoundly affected, almost
awe-stricken at the sight of that, but not at the sight of him.
“Oh,” she said, “I like you already very much: but that is not--that is
not--it is not--the same----”
“No,” he said, “it is not the same--it is very different; but I shall be
thankful for that, hoping for more. If you will only let me go on, and
let me hope?”
Effie knew no reply to make; her heart was beating, her head swimming:
they went on softly under the waving boughs a few steps, as in a dream.
Then he suddenly took her hand with the rose in it, and kissed it, and
took the flower from her fingers, which trembled under the novelty of
that touch.
“You will give it to me now--for a token,” he said, with a catching of
his breath.
Effie drew away her hand, but she left him the rose. She was in a tremor
of sympathetic excitement and emotion. How could she refuse to feel when
he felt so much? but she had nothing to say to him. So long as he asked
no more than this, there seemed no reason to thwart him, to
refuse--what? he had not asked for anything, only that she should like
him, which indeed she did; and that he might try to please her. To
please her! She was not so hard to please. She scarcely heard what he
went on to say, in a flood of hasty words, with many breaks, and looks
which she was conscious of, but did not resent. He seemed to be telling
her about herself, how sweet she was, how true and good, what a
happiness to know her, to be near her, to be permitted to walk by her
side as he was doing. Effie heard it and did not hear, walking on in her
dream, feeling that it was not possible any one could form such
extravagant ideas of her, inclined to laugh, half-inclined to cry, in a
strange enchantment which she could not break.
She heard her own voice say after a while, “Oh no, no--oh no, no--that
is all wrong. I am not like that, it cannot be me you are meaning.” But
this protest floated away upon the air, and was unreal like all the
rest. As for Fred, he was in an enchantment more potent still. Her
half-distressed, half-subdued listening, her little protestation, her
surprise, yet half-consent, and above all the privilege of pouring forth
upon her the full tide of passionate words which surprised himself by
their fluency and force, entirely satisfied him. Her youth, her gentle
ignorance and innocence, which were so sweet, fully accounted for the
absence of response.
He felt instinctively that it was sweeter that she should allow herself
to be worshipped, that she should not be ready to meet him, but have to
be wooed and entreated before she found a reply. These were all
additional charms. He felt no want, nor was conscious of any drawback.
The noise in the tops of the fir-trees, the waving of the branches
overhead, the rushing of the wind, were to Fred more sweet than any
sound of hidden brooks, or all the tender rustling of the foliage of
June.
Presently, however, there came a shock of awakening to this rapture,
when the young pair reached the little gate which admitted into the
garden of Gilston. Fred saw the house suddenly rising before him above
the shrubberies, gray and solid and real, and the sight of it brought
him back out of that magic circle. They both stopped short outside the
door with a consciousness of reality which silenced the one and roused
the other. In any other circumstances Effie would have asked him to come
in. She stopped now with her hand on the gate, with a sense of the
impossibility of inviting him now to cross that threshold. And Fred too
stopped short. To go farther would be to risk the entire fabric of this
sudden happiness.
He took her hand again, “Dear Effie, dearest Effie; good-night, darling,
good-night.”
“O Mr. Fred! but you must not call me these names, you must not
think---- It is all such a surprise, and I have let you say too much.
You must not think----”
“That I am to you what you are to me? Oh no, I do not think it; but you
will let me love you? that is all I ask: and you will try to think of me
a little. Effie, you will think of me--just a little--and of this sweet
moment, and of the flower you have given me.”
“Oh, I will not be able to help thinking,” cried Effie. “But, Mr. Fred,
I am just bewildered; I do not know what you have been saying. And I did
not give it you. Don’t suppose--oh don’t suppose---- You must not go
away thinking----”
“I think only that you will let me love you and try to please you.
Good-night, darling, good-night.”
Effie went through the garden falling back into her dream. She scarcely
knew what she was treading on, the garden paths all dim in the fading
light, or the flower-beds with their dahlias. She heard his footstep
hurrying along towards the road, and the sound of his voice seemed to
linger in the air--Darling! had any one ever called her by that name
before? There was nobody to call her so. She was Uncle John’s darling,
but he did not use such words: and there was no one else to do it.
Darling! now that she was alone she felt the hot blush come up
enveloping her from head to foot--was it Fred Dirom who had called her
that, a man, a stranger! A sudden fright and panic seized her. His
darling! what did that mean? To what had she bound herself? She could
not be his darling without something in return. Effie paused half-way
across the garden with a sudden impulse to run after him, to tell him
it was a mistake, that he must not think--But then she remembered that
she had already told him that he must not think--and that he had said
no, oh no, but that she was his darling. A confused sense that a great
deal had happened to her, though she scarcely knew how, and that she had
done something which she did not understand, without meaning it, without
desiring it, came over her like a gust of the wind which suddenly seemed
to have become chill, and blew straight upon her out of the colourless
sky which was all white and black with its flying clouds. She stood
still to think, but she could not think: her thoughts began to hurry
like the wind, flying across the surface of her mind, leaving no trace.
There were lights in the windows of the drawing-room, and Effie could
hear through the stillness the voice of her stepmother running on in her
usual strain, and little Rory shouting and driving his coach in the big
easy-chair. She could not bear to go into the lighted room, to expose
her agitated countenance to the comments which she knew would attend
her, the questions, where she had been, and why she was so late? Effie
had not a suspicion that her coming was eagerly looked for, and that
Mrs. Ogilvie was waiting with congratulations; but she could not meet
any eye with her story written so clearly in her face. She hurried up to
her own room, and there sat in the dark pondering and wondering. “Think
of me a little.” Oh! should she ever be able to think of anything else
all her life?