“Don’t!” murmured Maurice, softly.
“Or I can be really angry because my maid knocks something over, or does something clumsy; when one speaks of it, it seems absurd enough. Speaking spoils everything. Lovers—in books, I mean—talk the worst nonsense, and yet that nonsense is the expression of a very fine thing. I do not think that silence is enough appreciated. I want, for instance, to let you know what I am thinking. Well, when I put the thought into words, I lose some of it, or add something to it, or I alter it by an accident with the tone of my voice. Now if I could just look at you and you at me, and we could understand one another exactly through silence, it would be splendid.”
Maurice agreed with her. After two years of disappointment silence seemed to him almost the only thing left. There was, however, one thing even more consolatory. About a year after this conversation with Marjorie the two met once more, and Maurice put his failures behind him and told Marjorie that he loved her. So they both spoke the nonsense which they deprecated. We all believe that in affairs of the heart we are not as the others, and we are all mistaken. With him there was an iteration of “I love you,” with a deep tremble in the voice; and with her there was a sighing echo of the same words, coming up between blushes. The expression of the feeling was almost ludicrous; the feeling itself was so sacred that the lightest touch of thought seemed to soil it, and a writer, after turning over his vocabulary in disgust, can find nothing explanatory which at all matches it. But when it took place, it seemed to Maurice the only important thing that ever had happened to him; the psychological studies, which had brought him so much disappointment, appeared in a new light as a plaything that had seemed to amuse him until love came.
This did not happen at Paris. Maurice had returned to England, and all of them—Mrs. Meyner, Marjorie, and Maurice—were staying in Aunt Julia’s house. It was a lonely old house, much too big for that one wicked old lady; it stood outside a North Yorkshire village, just where a grand, dignified old hill drew back its skirts, with a sharp sweep, from contamination with human dwelling-places. Aunt Julia owned quarries at the foot of the hill, and got therefrom more money than was good for her. The time was December, and the moors looked bleak and cold. But it was a comfortable house. Aunt Julia had devoted her many years to the study of comfort—her own comfort. “There is nothing to shoot,” she explained to Maurice, “except my tenants down in the village. You can shoot them, if you like. There’s the library, though, which is good, and you can smoke anywhere you like——”
“But you used to hate smoking?” said Maurice.
“My dear Maurice, there are two of me, and you used to know the wrong one. Down in the village they mostly know the wrong one, and they call her, I am told, the hell-cat, which is rude of them. Yes, you can smoke anywhere. If you and Marjorie want to go out of the house—which is a thing I never do in December—I believe there are some horses round at the back. If there is anything wrong about the horses, or Pilkin, or anything that is his, just tell me, and I will say a word or two. I believe the man presumes on my ignorance. You can go and see my quarries, or my cottages; but you had better not go to the cottages, because they have no drains. I should like to give them some drains, but the tenants won’t let me. They are poor people, and a strong smell makes a difference to their colourless existence.”
So Maurice did a certain amount of reading, riding, and smoking. But, of course, Marjorie made for him the chief charm of the house. Mrs. Meyner had willingly consented to the engagement; even if she had desired to oppose it, her more strenuous half-sister would have reasoned her out of it; or, to use her own gentle euphemism, would have said a word or two. The days passed quietly enough. To Maurice they were a pleasant rest after his three years of wasted laboriousness. “Marjorie,” he said to her one afternoon, when they had wandered over the dignified hill, and as they came back saw the bare boughs of the trees in the plantation black against a red blot of sunset, “Marjorie, I have done with all questions. I am here, and you are here, and that is enough for me. I am going to live and love, and enjoy. Blessed be my fate that has saved me from the sordid worry of life. (Just wait a second, will you? can’t get a match to light in this wind.) We will make a beautiful house, with beautiful things in it, with good books on shelves, and good wine in the cellar, and a good cook in the kitchen. And no one shall enter into that house who is not either very beautiful, or very clever, or too good for this world.”
“But I shall be so lonely there without you,” said Marjorie, gently, with her sparkling eyes looking groundwards.
Maurice laughed. “Ah, Marjorie, you and I will be one, and you are more beautiful, and clever, and better than any one in the world. That is how I shall have a right to come into my own beautiful house. We will trouble ourselves with no theories about anything. We will not get excited about anything; an excited man always has been, or will be, dull. We will make life one long, gentle enjoyment.”
He spoke half in jest and half in earnest, telling his soul of beautiful things laid up in that house for many years; bidding himself to eat, and drink, and enjoy judiciously.