Catherine listened to the fall of water in the basin of the fountain.
She was conscious of a faint hope--a hope unworthy of her--that Kitty
might get weary of the gold-fishes, and might interrupt them. No such
thing happened; no stranger appeared on the path which wound through the
garden. She was alone with him. The influences of the still and fragrant
summer evening were influences which breathed of love.
“Have you thought of me since yesterday?” he asked gently.
She owned that she had thought of him.
“Is there no hope that your heart will ever incline toward me?”
“I daren’t consult my heart. If I had only to consider my own
feelings--” She stopped.
“What else have you to consider?”
“My past life--how I have suffered, and what I have to repent of.”
“Has your married life not been a happy one?” he asked.
“Not a happy one--in the end,” she answered.
“Through no fault of yours, I am sure?”
“Through no fault of mine, certainly.”
“And yet you said just now that you had something to repent of?”
“I was not thinking of my husband, Captain Bennydeck, when I said that.
If I have injured any person, the person is myself.”
She was thinking of that fatal concession to the advice of her mother,
and to the interests of her child, which placed her in a false position
toward the honest man who loved her and trusted her. If he had been less
innocent in the ways of the world, and not so devotedly fond of her,
he might, little by little, have persuaded Catherine to run the risk of
shocking him by a confession of the truth. As it was, his confidence
in her raised him high above the reach of suspicions which might have
occurred to other men. He saw her turn pale; he saw distress in her
face, which he interpreted as a silent reproach to him for the questions
he had asked.
“I hope you will forgive me?” he said simply.
She was astonished. “What have I to forgive?”
“My want of delicacy.”
“Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you speak of one of your great merits as if
it were a fault! Over and over again I have noticed your delicacy, and
admired it.”
He was too deeply in earnest to abandon his doubts of himself.
“I have ignorantly led you to think of your sorrows,” he said; “sorrows
that I cannot console. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. May I make the
one excuse in my power? May I speak of myself?”
She told him by a gesture that he had made a needless request.
“The life I have led,” he resumed, “accounts, perhaps, in some degree,
for what is deficient in me. At school, I was not a popular boy; I only
made one friend, and he has long since been numbered with the dead. Of
my life at college, and afterward in London, I dare not speak to you;
I look back at it with horror. My school-friend decided my choice of a
profession; he went into the navy. After a while, not knowing what else
to do, I followed his example. I liked the life--I may say the sea saved
me. For years, I was never on shore for more than a few weeks at a time.
I saw nothing of society; I was hardly ever in the company of ladies.
The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic expedition.
God forbid I should tell you of what men go through who are lost in the
regions of eternal ice! Let me only say I was preserved--miraculously
preserved--to profit by that dreadful experience. It made a new man of
me; it altered me ( I hope for the better) into what I am now. Oh, I
feel that I ought to have kept my secret yesterday--I mean my daring to
love you. I should have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct
pleased you perhaps, and spoke for me. You won’t laugh, I am sure, if I
confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced. Never till I met you have
I known what true love is--and this at forty years old. How some people
would laugh! I own it seems melancholy to me.”
“No; not melancholy.”
Her voice trembled. Agitation, which it was not a pain but a luxury to
feel, was gently taking possession of her. Where another man might have
seen that her tenderness was getting the better of her discretion, and
might have presumed on the discovery, this man, innocently blind to his
own interests, never even attempted to take advantage of her. No more
certain way could have been devised, by the most artful lover, of
touching the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own.
The influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck’s
character--his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his religious
convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming
notice--had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily
intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as
strongly as she felt it now. By fine degrees, the warning remembrances
which had hitherto made her hesitate lost their hold on her memory.
Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing, she began to search his
feelings in his own presence. Such love as his had been unknown in her
experience; the luxury of looking into it, and sounding it to its inmost
depths, was more than the woman’s nature could resist.
“I think you hardly do yourself justice,” she said. “Surely you don’t
regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you yesterday that my
old friend had deserted me?”
“No, indeed!”
“Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curiosity to know
who my friend was?”
“I should have been ashamed of myself if I had asked the question.”
“And did you believe that I had a good motive--a motive which you might
yourself have appreciated--for not telling you the name of that friend?”
“Is he some one whom I know?”
“Ought you to ask me that, after what I have just said?”
“Pray forgive me! I spoke without thinking.”
“I can hardly believe it, when I remember how you spoke to me yesterday.
I could never have supposed, before we became acquainted with each
other, that it was in the nature of a man to understand me so perfectly,
to be so gentle and so considerate in feeling for my distress. You
confused me a little, I must own, by what you said afterward. But I am
not sure that ought to be severe in blaming you. Sympathy--I mean
such sympathy as yours--sometimes says more than discretion can always
approve. Have you not found it so yourself?”
“I have found it so with you.”
“And perhaps I have shown a little too plainly how dependent I am on
you--how dreadful it would be to me if I lost you too as a friend?”
She blushed as she said it. When the words had escaped her, she felt
that they might bear another meaning than the simple meaning which
she had attached to them. He took her hand; his doubts of himself, his
needless fear of offending her, restrained him no longer.
“You can never lose me,” he said, “if you will only let me be the
nearest friend that a woman can have. Bear with me, dearest! I ask for
so much; I have so little to offer in return. I dream of a life with you
which is perhaps too perfectly happy to be enjoyed on earth. And yet, I
cannot resign my delusion. Must my poor heart always long for happiness
which is beyond my reach? If an overruling Providence guides our course
through this world, may we not sometimes hope for happier ends than our
mortal eyes can see?”
He waited a moment--and sighed--and dropped her hand. She hid her face;
she knew what it would tell him: she was ashamed to let him see it.
“I didn’t mean to distress you,” he said sadly.
She let him see her face. For a moment only, she looked at him--and then
let silence tell him the rest.
His arms closed round her. Slowly, the glory of the sun faded from the
heavens, and the soft summer twilight fell over the earth. “I can’t
speak,” he whispered; “my happiness is too much for me.”
“Are you sure of your happiness?” she asked.
“Could I think as I am thinking now, if I were not sure of it?”
“Are you thinking of _me?_”
“Of you--and of all that you will be to me in the future. Oh, my angel,
if God grants us many years to come, what a perfect life I see!”
“Tell me--what do you see?”
“I see a husband and wife who are all in all to each other. If friends
come to us, we are glad to bid them welcome; but we are always happiest
by ourselves.”
“Do we live in retirement?”
“We live where you like best to live. Shall it be in the country?”
“Yes! yes! You have spoken of the sea as you might have spoken of your
best friend--we will be near the sea. But I must not keep you selfishly
all to myself. I must remember how good you have been to poor creatures
who don’t feel our happiness, and who need your kindness. Perhaps I
might help you? Do you doubt it?”
“I only doubt whether I ought to let you see what I have seen; I am only
afraid of the risk of making you unhappy. You tempt me to run the risk.
The help of a woman--and of such a woman as you are--is the one thing I
have wanted. Your influence would succeed where my influence has often
failed. How good, how thoughtful you would be!”
“I only want to be worthy of you,” she said, humbly. “When may I see
your Home?”
He drew her closer to him: tenderly and timidly he kissed her for the
first time. “It rests with you,” he answered. “When will you be my
wife?”
She hesitated; he felt her trembling. “Is there any obstacle?” he asked.
Before she could reply, Kitty’s voice was heard calling to her
mother--Kitty ran up to them.
Catherine turned cold as the child caught her by the hand, eagerly
claiming her attention. All that she should have remembered, all that
she had forgotten in a few bright moments of illusion, rose in judgment
against her, and struck her mind prostrate in an instant, when she felt
Kitty’s touch.
Bennydeck saw the change. Was it possible that the child’s sudden
appearance had startled her? Kitty had something to say, and said it
before he could speak.
“Mamma, I want to go where the other children are going. Susan’s gone to
her supper. You take me.”
Her mother was not even listening. Kitty turned impatiently to
Bennydeck. “Why won’t mamma speak to me?” she asked. He quieted her by a
word. “You shall go with me.” His anxiety about Catherine was more than
he could endure. “Pray let me take you back to the house,” he said. “I
am afraid you are not well.”
“I shall be better directly. Do me a kindness--take the child!”
She spoke faintly and vacantly. Bennydeck hesitated. She lifted her
trembling hands in entreaty. “I beg you will leave me!” Her voice, her
manner, made it impossible to disobey. He turned resignedly to Kitty and
asked which way she wanted to go. The child pointed down the path to
one of the towers of the Crystal Palace, visible in the distance. “The
governess has taken the others to see the company go away,” she said; “I
want to go too.”
Bennydeck looked back before he lost sight of Catherine.
She remained seated, in the attitude in which he had left her. At the
further end of the path which led to the hotel, he thought he saw a
figure in the twilight, approaching from the house. There would be help
near, if Catherine wanted it.
His uneasy mind was in some degree relieved, as he and Kitty left the
garden together.