“ONE BORN TO LOVE YOU, SWEET.”
“And Mr. Sefton,” asked Vansittart, “what has he to do with this?”
“He was with my brother at Cambridge--in the same year, at the same
college, Trinity. It was not till the year before last that he ever
spoke to me about Harold, or that I knew they had been friends. But one
summer afternoon when he called and happened to find me in the garden,
alone--a thing that seldom happens in our family--he began to talk to
me, very kindly, with a great deal of good feeling, about Harold. He
said he had been slow to speak about him, as he knew that he must be in
some measure under a cloud. And then I told him how unhappy I was about
my poor brother; and how it was four or five years since anything had
been heard of him directly or indirectly. His last letter had told us
that he was going to join a party of young men who were just setting
out upon an exploring tour in the Mashona country. They were willing
to take him with them on very easy terms, as he was a fine shot, and
strong and active. He would be little better than a servant in the
expedition, he told me.”
“It was to you he wrote, then?”
“Yes, after my mother’s death, only to me. He never wrote to his
father. I told Mr. Sefton how unhappy I was about Harold, and my
fear--a growing fear--that he must be dead. He argued me out of this
terror, and told me that when a man who was leading a wild life far
away from home once let a long time slip without writing to his
relations, the probabilities were that he would leave off writing
altogether. His experience had shown him that this was almost a
certainty. And then, seeing how distressed I was, he promised that
he would try and find out Harold’s whereabouts. He told me that the
newspaper press and the electric cable had made the world a very small
world, and that he certainly ought to be able to trace my brother’s
wanderings, and bring me some information about him.”
“And did he succeed?”
“No; he failed always in getting any certain knowledge of Harold’s
wanderings, though he did bring me some scraps of information about his
adventures in Mashonaland; but that was all news of past years--ever
so long ago. He could hear nothing about Harold in the present--not
within the last four years--so there was very little comfort in his
discoveries. Last November he told me that he had heard of a man at the
diamond fields whose description seemed exactly to fit my brother, and
he thought this time he was on the right track. He wrote to an agent
at Cape Town, and took every means of putting himself in communication
with this man--both through the agent and by advertisements in the
local papers--and the result was disappointment. There was no Harold
Marchant among the diamond-seekers. That was what he had to tell me the
afternoon you overheard our conversation. He had received the final
letter which assured him he had been mistaken.”
“And that was all--and verily all?” inquired Vansittart, taking her
hand in his.
“That was all, and verily all.”
“And beyond that association, Mr. Sefton is nothing in the world to
you?”
“Nothing in the world.”
“And if there were some one else, quite as willing as Mr. Sefton, to
hunt for this wandering brother of yours, some one else who loves you
fondly”--his arm was round her now, and he was drawing her towards him,
drawing the blushing cheek against his own, drawing the slender form so
near that he could hear the beating of her heart--“some one else who
longs to have you for his wife, would you listen to him, Eve? And if
that some one else were I, would you say ‘Yes’?”
She turned to answer him, but her lips trembled and were mute. There
was no need of speech between lovers whose very life breathed love. His
lips met hers, and took his answer there.
“Dearest, dearest, dearest,” he sighed, when that long kiss had sealed
the bond; and then they sat in silence, hand clasped in hand, in the
face of the Sussex Weald, and the far-reaching Sussex Downs, and the
silvery shimmer of the distant sea.
Oh, Easter Day of deep content! Would either of these two souls ever
know such perfect bliss again--the bliss of loving and being loved,
while love was still a new thing?
A shrill long cooey broke the silent spell, and they both started up as
if awakened out of deepest slumber.
“They are looking for us,” cried Eve, as she walked swiftly towards the
other side of the ridge.
Tivett and the four girls came toiling towards her.
“Mr. Tivett has taken us a most awful round,” cried Hetty. “He
pretended to know the way, and he doesn’t know it one little bit.”
“My dear young lady,” apologized the gentle Tivett, “the truth of the
matter is that I trusted to my natural genius for topography, for I
have never been on Bexley Hill before.”
“And you pretended to pilot us, and have only led us astray.”
“Alas! sweet child, the world is full of such pilots.”
“Shall I tell them?” whispered Vansittart, at Eve’s ear.
“If you like. They will make a dreadful fuss. Can you ever put up with
so many sisters-in-law?”
“I would put up with them if you had as many sisters as Hypermnestra;”
and then, laughing happily, he told these four girls that they were
soon to have a sister less and a brother more.
Hetty and Peggy received the news with whooping and clapping of hands,
Sophy and Jenny with polite surprise. Was there ever anything so
wonderful? Nothing could have been further from their thoughts. Little
Mr. Tivett skipped and frisked like a young lamb in a meadow. Had Eve
Marchant been his sister he could hardly have shown more delight.
The descent of the hill for Eve and Vansittart was a progress through
pure ether. They knew not that their feet touched the earth. They
were like the greater gods and goddesses in the Homeric Olympus. They
started and they arrived. The labour of common mortals was not for them.
“Do you remember the legend of the blue flower of happiness which grows
upon the mountain peak, and is said to fade and wither in the lower
air?” asked Vansittart, close at his fiancée’s ear. “We have found the
blue flower on the hilltop, Eve. God grant that for us the heaven-born
blossom will keep its bloom even on the dull level of daily life.”
“Will our life be dull?” she questioned, in her shy sweet voice, as if
she scarcely dared speak of her love louder than in a whisper. “I don’t
think I can ever find life dull so long as you really care for me.”
“No, Eve, life shall not be dull. It shall be as bright and varied, and
as full of change and gladness, as devoted love can make it. Your youth
has not been free from care, dearest; and you have missed many of the
pleasures which girls of your age demand as a right. But the arrears
shall be made up. There shall be full measure of gladness in your
married life, if I can make you glad. I am not what the modern world
calls a rich man; but I am very far from poverty. I have enough for all
the real pleasures of life--for travel, and books, and music, and the
drama, and gracious surroundings, and kindly charities. The sting of
narrow means can never touch my wife.”
“It can be a very sharp sting sometimes,” said Eve; and then, dropping
again into that shy undertone, “But if you were ever so poor, and if
you were a working man, and we had to live in that cottage under the
beech tree, squatters, with only a key-holding, I think I could be
perfectly happy.”
“Ah, that is what love always thinks, while the blue flower blooms; but
when that mystic flower begins to fade there is some virtue in pleasant
surroundings. Years hence, when you begin to be tired of me, and the
blue flower takes a greyish shade, why, we can change the scene of our
lives, wander far away, and in a new world I shall seem almost a new
lover.”
“Will you ever take me to Italy?” she asked. “Italy has been the dream
of my life, but I never thought it would be realized.”
“Ah, that is just a girl’s fancy, fed by old-fashioned poets--Byron,
for instance. The Italy of to-day is very disappointing, and just like
everywhere else.”
“Oh, Mr. Vansittart!”
“Mr.!” he echoed. “Henceforward I am John, or Jack; very soon, my
husband. Never again Mr., except in your letters to tradespeople or
your orders to servants.”
“Am I really to call you Jack?”
“Really. It is the name by which I best know myself. But if you think
it is too vulgar----”
“Vulgar; it is a lovely name. Jack! Jack!”
She repeated the monosyllable as if it were a sound of exquisite
music, a sound on which to dwell lingeringly and lovingly for its very
sweetness. To Vansittart also the name was sweet, spoken by those lips.
* * * * *
Colonel Marchant received Mr. Vansittart’s offer for his eldest
daughter politely, but with no excess of cordiality. He had set his
hope upon a richer marriage, had encouraged Sefton’s visit to the
Homestead, with the idea that he would eventually propose to Eve. He
might not mean matrimony in the first instance, perhaps, though he
obviously admired the young lady, but he would be led on and caught
before he was aware. Colonel Marchant had implicit faith in his
daughter’s power to ward off any evil purpose of her admirer; and
although he knew Sefton’s character well enough to know that he would
not willingly marry a penniless girl, he trusted to the power of Eve’s
beauty and personal charm to bring him to the right frame of mind.
He was too shrewd a campaigner, however, to refuse the humble sparrow
in the hand for the goldfinch in the bush. Sefton had been dangling
about the family for nearly two years, and had scrupulously abstained
from any serious declaration; and here was a young man of good birth
and breeding, with a very fair estate, who between January and April
had made up his mind in the manliest fashion, and was willing to take
Eve for his wife without a sixpence, and to settle three hundred a year
upon her for pin-money. Vansittart had offered himself in a frank and
business-like manner, had declared the amount of his income, and his
anxiety to marry as soon as possible.
“We have nothing in this world to wait for,” he said.
“Except a young lady’s caprice,” answered the Colonel. “Eve will be too
happy in the pleasures of courtship to be anxious for the final step.
And then there will be her trousseau to prepare. That will take time.”
“My mother can help her in all those details,” said Vansittart,
thinking that in all probability his mother would have to pay for as
well as to choose the wedding finery. “We can take all that trouble off
your hands, Colonel Marchant.”
He wrote to his mother on Sunday night, when his sister’s household
and guests were hushed in their first sleep; wrote at fullest length,
dwelling fondly upon the graces and perfections of her whom he had
chosen.
“She will love you dearly, if you will let her,” he wrote; “she will
be to you as a second daughter--nearer to you, perhaps, than Maud can
now be; for, if you will have it so, our lives may be spent mostly
together, in a triple bond of love. I know not what your inclination
may be, but for my own part I see no reason why we should not live as
one household. Merewood is large enough for a much larger family than
ours could be for years to come. Eve has been so long motherless that
she would the more gladly welcome motherly love and solicitude. Think
of it all, mother, and act in all things as may be most congenial to
yourself. I would ask no sacrifices, but I do ask you to love my wife.”
This letter written, he could lay himself down to rest with an
unburdened spirit, could fearlessly enter dreamland, knowing that his
love would be with him in the land of shadows.
Strange, cruel irony, that the scene of his dreams should be Venice,
where he and Eve were wandering confusedly, now on land, now on sea,
greatly troubled by petty disturbances, and continually losing each
other in labyrinthine streets and on slippery sea-washed stairs.
Stranger still that Venice should be unlike Venice, and indeed unlike
any place he had ever seen in his life.
The dream was but a natural sequence of Eve’s talk about Italy. It
had hurt him that one of her first utterances after their betrothal
should express her desire to visit a land whose frontier he would never
willingly cross again. He had loved Italy with all his heart; but now
the image of Venice burnt and festered in his mind like a plague-spot
on the breast of a man in full health. All except that one accursed
memory was peace.