AN INVALID.
How do I love thee? Let me count the sums.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height,
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace——
When, a month later, Sutton was carried into Dustypore, he was, as any one would have felt, a fit subject for romance, and Maud was just in the mood to appreciate all that was romantic about him to the full. She had been thinking about this event and fancying it, and dreaming about it for weeks past, poor child, till it had become for her the very climax of existence. As the time for its realisation drew near she had been haunted by nervous apprehensions as to whether she had not misinterpreted Sutton's words of kindness at that last interview, and whether the moment of disillusionment might not be now arriving. Sutton, so a morbid mood suggested, might have meant nothing; or his words, perhaps, proved only a passing tenderness, engendered by the special circumstances of the hour: her fancy, perhaps, had dressed up a few careless expressions into something serious. But there came a truer voice which said that it was not so; that Sutton was not a man of careless words or a transient mood, and that a pledge had been given, though without actual spoken vow, which he assuredly would redeem on his return. On the whole then, though not absolutely without a misgiving, Maud was joyous and courageous, and her heart was light within her. She, however, felt herself becoming greatly embarrassed and excited as the hour of Sutton's arrival drew near. The most needless blushes came flushing into her cheeks; the simplest things seemed difficult to answer. Felicia knew, Maud was certain, pretty well how matters stood; knew at any rate that there was something between her and Sutton: yet Maud had never summoned up courage to inform her what it was, nor had Felicia chosen to inquire. It was rather agitating, accordingly, that Felicia should now be about to have an opportunity of judging for herself how matters stood.
Then Sutton arrived, too suffering from his wound to be moved except in a palanquin; and was got, with a great deal of trouble and pain apparently, to the sofa in Vernon's study, which was turned into his sitting-room for the time being, and where the invalid was to spend the day. Here he lay, a close prisoner, as feeble as a bad wound and a month's fever could make him, and quite in a condition for judicious nursing. A man in such a plight wants company—pleasant, gentle, noiseless, unexciting, feminine if possible; he wants to be read to, and sung and played to; he wants cooling drinks, which, when mixed and administered by a hand like Felicia's, are more than nectar; he wants those delicious idle gossips, for which the healthy busy side of life so seldom provides either the opportunity or the mood. If a man lack these, an illness is a dreary affair; if he has them, it may bring him the pleasantest hours of his life.
All these pleasant conditions now attended the fortunate Sutton's convalescence. Felicia welcomed him with a joyful cordiality and devoted herself with enthusiasm to the task of making his imprisonment as little wearisome as might be. Vernon stole an hour from his office to read him the 'Pall Mall Gazette;' Maud found herself busy with the rest, a willing attendant on the happy warrior in his hour of weakness. Everybody made a great deal of him. Felicia's little girls, coming with much modesty and many blushes, brought him a nosegay apiece and kissed his hand with a sort of affectionate reverence. His face was wan and thin, and marked with lines of suffering; but the sweet, kind smile was still the same, and the honest eyes and finely-chiselled brow. On the whole Maud found him handsomer and ten times more touching than ever before. She knew, too, before they had been a minute in each other's company that all was well with her. The time of separation, uncertainty, distress, was done: happiness, greater than she had ever dreamed of, was already hers. Her foot stood already on the crowning ridge of existence, and all the horizon blazed with the golden clouds of Hope and Joy.
One effect that Sutton always had upon her she was especially conscious of just now: she had no feeling of shyness with him, such as she felt with all the world beside; he stirred her being too profoundly for any slighter feeling to find a place. Shyness deals with the superficial, slighter outcomings of life. Sutton seemed to transport her to another world of thought and feeling: thoughts too high and feelings too intense to heed the mode of their expression. The consequence was, that it seemed quite natural to Maud for her to be waiting on him; who had so good a right as she to that pleasant duty?
Then presently Felicia went away with the children, and the two were again, for the first time, alone together.
'Come,' Sutton said, changing his manner instantly, 'sit down by me and tell me all that has happened since we parted on the mountain's side. You missed me a little, I hope?'
'Yes,' said Maud, simply, looking at him with fearless, trusting eyes; 'your going was the end of all our pleasure—we went away to the Gully, and then came your accident and some dreadful days of anxiety. Since then everything has seemed a sort of dream.'
'It has seemed a dream to me sometimes,' said Sutton, 'as I lay and wondered whether the happiness I fancied for myself was real or fable. Things befall one so suddenly in life, and strokes of good or ill fortune take one so by surprise, that one distrusts one's own belief about them, and cannot fancy that the old life which went before has been all transfigured. Now, however, that I see you and hear you and have you about me, I begin to feel it was not a dream after all.'
'It was no dream,' said Maud, in her serious way; 'here is your locket, which I have been keeping for you since we parted.'
'No,' said the other, giving back the proffered locket and keeping the hand which gave it in captivity; 'you shall keep it now, if you will, for good and all; that is, if you have a fancy for an old soldier, wounded and battered as you see me. Here I shall be for weeks, I suppose, a burden on the friends who are good-natured enough to be my nurses. You will have to tend me, as Elaine did Launcelot in his cave.'
'I will,' Maud said, wrapped into a mood which left her scarcely mistress of herself; 'my love is as great as hers was. I have been living all these weeks only that I might see you again. I must have died if you had not come back, or come back other than I hoped.'
The die was cast—the words were spoken; they came out naturally, spontaneously, almost unconsciously before Maud had time to know what she was about, or to judge of the wisdom and propriety of what she was saying. They were the truth; they were what she had been feeling and saying to herself for weeks past; they were the true outcoming of her honest heart; and yet no sooner were they spoken than Maud felt an awful conviction that they had better have been left unsaid; they were more, far more, than anything which had been said on Sutton's part to her. Was it wrong, unwomanly, indecorous, thus to have declared herself and torn the veil from her feelings without waiting for a lover's hand to remove it? The thought rushed in upon her with an agonizing distinctness; the blood came rushing to her cheeks and forehead; her very hand which Sutton was holding in his own, emaciated and bloodless, was blushing too. She could say nothing, she could do nothing but stay, helpless, having made her confession, and wait for Sutton to rescue her.
As he lay there, holding her hand in his, clasping it with a firm, tender grasp, which seemed to be expressive of all she wanted, Felicia came into the room. Maud stood there, scarlet, and moved not, nor did Sutton seem inclined that she should.
'Felicia,' he said, 'you are the good angel of us both, and this moment would have been incomplete without you. Maud has just consented to become my wife.'
Felicia took Maud to her arms in a sort of rapture of happiness; her heart was too full for speech. It was a delightful relief from the anxiety and distress which had been weighing upon her all the summer and which had of late grown into an acute pang. She felt grateful to both parties, who had at last brought about the result for which she had wished so anxiously and of which she had somehow begun to despair.
Maud, on her part, felt it natural that Sutton should, at a trying emergency, have protected her skilfully, considerately, efficiently from the embarrassment into which her outspokenness had betrayed her; it was like himself to do so, and typical of the sort of feeling of confidence with which he always inspired her. There was a delightful sense of safety and protection in being with him. How should her heart not beat high at the thought that this safety and protection would evermore be hers!