2
Jeremy’s next distinct impression was that of sitting in a small room while the Speaker poured down his throat a glass of neat smoke-flavored whisky. It revived him, and he straightened himself and stood up, but he found that his back ached and that his legs were unsteady. The Speaker forced him down again and bent over him tenderly, muttering caressing and soothing words at the back of his throat.
“You will feel better presently,” he said at last; and he went out softly, looking back and smiling as he went. When he was alone, Jeremy rose again and walked towards the door, but was checked at once by a great fatigue and weakness. He looked round the room, and, seeing a couch, threw himself at full length upon it.
“I wish I could go to sleep,” he murmured to himself. But his brain, though it was exhausted, was so clear and active that he gave up all hope of it. When, a minute later, sleep came to him, it would have astonished him if he could have noticed it coming.
He woke to wonder how long he had been unconscious. It had been about noon when they had arrived at the Treasury; but now the tall trees outside the window hid the sky and prevented him guessing by the sun what hour it was. He turned over on to his back and stared up lazily at the ceiling. The confusion which had at first overwhelmed his mind, and the unnatural clarity which had followed it, were both gone, and he felt that he was normal again, not even very much tired. The indolence and calm of the spirit which he now experienced were delicious: they were like the physical sensations which succeed violent exercise.
He looked down again with a start, as he heard the door quietly opened; and he saw the Lady Eva standing there. She had a mysterious smile on her lips, and her whole attitude suggested that she was bracing herself to meet something which frightened but did not displease her. Jeremy rose abruptly, his heart beating, and tried to speak; but he could not get out a single word.
“My father sent me to ask if you were better,” said the Lady Eva in a low voice. As he did not answer she closed the door behind her and advanced into the room. “Are you better?” she repeated, a little more firmly. Jeremy took a step towards her and hesitated. The situation seemed plain, and yet, at the last moment of decision, his will was paralyzed by a fear that he might be absurdly deceiving himself.
“I am much better now,” he answered, with an effort. “I only feel a little tired.”
“There is a banquet at five o’clock. I hope you will be able to attend it.”
Jeremy shivered slightly and his wits began to return to him. “Will it be like—like this morning?” he enquired with a faint smile.
She smiled a little in reply. “Don’t you want us to be grateful to you?” she said. “You know what you have saved us from—all of us. How can we ever reward you?”
“That’s my chance,” Jeremy’s mind insisted again and again. “That’s my chance ... that’s my chance ... I ought to speak now.” But the short interval of her silence slipped away, and she went on gently:
“You must expect to be congratulated and toasted. Will you be strong enough to bear it? My father will be disappointed if you are not.”
It was at that moment, quite irrelevantly and by a process he did not understand, that Jeremy took the Lady Eva in his arms. Afterwards he had no consciousness, no recollection, of the instant in which their lips had met. There had simply been an insurgence of his passion and of his loneliness, ending in an action that blinded him. The next thing he remembered was folding her bowed head into his shoulder, stroking her smooth hair with a trembling hand, and muttering hoarsely and helplessly, “Dearest ... dear one....”
Then they were sitting side by side on the couch and their positions were reversed. His head lay on her shoulder, while her fingers moved gently up and down his cheek. He stayed thus for some minutes without speaking or moving. He had been in love before and had not escaped the mood in which young men picture the surrender of the beloved. He had even more than once, after a long or a short wooing, held a girl in his arms and kissed her. But he had never yet seen this sudden and astonishing transformation of a stranger, mysterious and incalculable, whose faults and peculiarities were as obvious as her beauty was enchanting, into a creature who could thus silently and familiarly comfort him. The moment before she had been some one else, the Lady Eva, a person as to whose opinion of himself he was uncertain and curious, that most baffling and impenetrable of all enigmas, another human being, divided from him by every barrier that looks or speech can put in the way of understanding. And now she was at once a lover, a part of himself, a spirit known by his without any need of words. He adjusted himself slowly to the miracle.
Presently he raised his head and searched her eyes keenly. She bore his gaze without flinching; and something again drew their mouths together. Then Jeremy said,
“I must speak to your father at once. Do you suppose he will feel that I have presumed on his gratitude to me?”
“I know he will not,” she answered. “I am sure he meant to give me to you. Do you think that otherwise....” She stopped, and there was a long pause. “But I wanted you ... first....” Again she could not go on, but began to sob a little, quietly. Jeremy, helpless and inexperienced, could think of nothing better to do than to gather her into his arms and kiss her hair. His sudden comprehension of her seemed to have vanished with as little warning as it came. She was again a mysterious creature; but now the mystery was a new one. He was like a man who, after the triumph of accomplishing a steep ascent, finds that he has reached no more than the first slope of the mountain.
When her face was hidden she continued with more confidence, but in a low and broken voice. “I wanted you to tell me that you ... wanted me, before my father gave me to you. I thought ... perhaps you did ... I hoped....” She freed herself from his arms and sat up, looking at him with proud eyes, though her face was blazing. “It is better than being given to you only as a reward for winning a battle,” she finished deliberately.
Jeremy experienced the most inexplicable feeling of the young lover—admiration for the beloved. He wished to hold her away from him, to contemplate the lovely face, the gallant eyes, to tell her how wonderful she was, and how he could thank Heaven for her even if he might never touch her hand again. And on the heels of this came a great rush of unbearable longing, with the realization that human tongue was not able to express, or human nerves to endure, his love for her. He turned dizzy and faint, his sight went black, and he stretched out his arms vaguely and helplessly. When she gave herself into them, he clasped her fiercely as though by force he could make her part of himself, and she bore his clumsy violence gladly.
“This hurts me,” he said in the puzzled voice of a child, when he had let her go again. She gave him with wet eyes a sufficient answer. Then he went on with the same simplicity, “I have been so lonely here—I didn’t know how lonely. Are we going to be happy now? I am afraid ... of what may happen....” She kissed him once and rose.
“I must go now,” she said steadily. “Oh, we shall be happy—this dread means nothing, it is only because we are so happy.” He started and looked at her, made uneasy by her echo of his thoughts. “Good-by, my dear,” she said. She left the room quietly without his raising a hand to keep her back.
When she had gone his feelings were too violent to find vent in any movement. He sat quite still for some minutes until his brain was calmer and he could at last stand up and walk about the room. It was thus that the Speaker found him; and Jeremy stopped guiltily and stood waiting. The old man was evidently still in good humor. He stroked his chin and regarded Jeremy with beaming eyes.
“I take it you are feeling better,” he pronounced drily, after a moment’s silence.
“I am quite well,” Jeremy answered hurriedly, “very well. I must tell you at once, sir——”
The Speaker stopped him with a gesture. “I know. I passed my daughter in the corridor leading to her room. You want to tell me that you have taken my gift before I could make it. Nevertheless, I shall have the great joy of putting her hand in yours at the banquet to-night.”
“I can’t thank you ...” Jeremy mumbled.
The Speaker made a benevolent movement of his hand. “What you and she have done,” he went on, “is much against our customs, but we are not ordinary people, you and I and she. You will be happy together, and it will make me happy to see you so. And I think you are young enough to get from her the help that I should have had, if there had not been so many years between us. She has something of me in her that you will be able to use. You will need to use it, for you will have a great deal to do, both now and afterwards, when I am gone and you are the Speaker.”
Jeremy inclined his head in silence.
“The banquet is in half-an-hour from now,” the Speaker said, turning towards the door. “If you are well enough to attend it, you must go and dress at once.”