Yes, she knew; while unconscious I talked of Georgiana, of being
in love with her. Mrs. Walters added, sadly, that Georgiana
came home in the fall engaged to that New York cousin. Hence the
sewing--he is to marry her in June.
I am _not_ in love with her. It is now four weeks since hearing
this conventional fiction, and every day I have been perfectly
able to repeat: "I am _not_ in love with Georgiana!" There was
one question which I put severely to Mrs. Walters: Had she told
Georgiana of my foolish talk? She shook her head violently, and
pressed her lips closely together, suggesting how impossible it
would be for the smallest monosyllable in the language to escape
by that channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and the truth
issued from them, as smoke in a hollow tree, if stopped in at a
lower hole, simply rises and comes out at a higher one. "You should
have shut your eyes also," I said. "You have told her every word
of it, and the Lord only knows how much more."
This February has let loose its whole pack of grizzly sky-hounds.
Unbroken severe weather. Health has not returned as rapidly as was
promised, and I have not ventured outside the yard. But it is a
pleasure to chronicle the beginning of an acquaintanceship between
his proud eminence the young cardinal and myself. For a long time
he would have naught to do with me, fled as I approached, abandoned
the evergreens altogether and sat on the naked tree-tops, as much
as threatening to quit the place altogether if I did not leave him
in peace. Surely he is the shyest of his kind, and, to my fancy,
the most beautiful; and therefore Nature seems to have stored him
with extra caution towards archenemy.
But in the old human way I have taken advantage of his necessities.
The north wind has been by friend against him. I have called
in the aid of sleets and snows, have besieged him in his white
castle behind the glittering array of his icicles with threats of
starvation. So one day, dropping like a glowing coal down among
the other birds, he snatched a desperate hasty meal from the public
poor-house table that I had spread under the trees.
It is the first surrender that decides. Since then some progress
has been made in winning his confidence, but the struggle going on
in his nature is plain enough still. At times he will rush away
from me in utter terror; at others he lets me draw a little nearer,
a little nearer, without moving form a limb; and now, after a month
of persuasion, he begins to discredit the experience which he has
inherited from centuries upon centuries of ancestors. In all that
I have done I have tried to say to him: "Don't judge me by mankind
in general. With me you are safe. I pledge myself to defend you
from enemies, high and low."
This had not escaped the notice of Georgiana at the window, and more
than once she had let her work drop to watch my patient progress
and to bestow upon me a rewarding smile. Is there nearly always
sadness in it, or is the sadness in my eyes? If Georgiana's brother
is giving her trouble, I'd like to take a hand-axe to _his_ feet.
I suppose I shall never know whether he cut her foot in two. She
carries the left one a little peculiarly; but so many women do
that.
Sometimes, when the day's work is over and the servant is gone,
Georgiana comes to the window and looks away towards the sunsets
of winter, her hands clasped behind her back, her motionless figure
in relief against the darkness within, her face white and still.
Being in the shadow of my own room, so that she could not see me,
and knowing that I ought not to do it, but unable to resist, I have
softly taken up the spy-glass which I use in the study of birds,
and have drawn Georgiana's face nearer to me, holding it there
till she turns away. I have noted the traces of pain, and once
the tears which she could not keep back and was too proud to heed.
Then I have sat before my flickering embers, with I know not what
all but ungovernable yearning to be over there in the shadowy room
with her, and, whether she would or not, to fold my arms around
her, and, drawing her face against mine, whisper: "What is it
Georgiana? And why must it be?"