He had always been grave, and he was too strong and vigorous for trouble to tell easily on his health; so his appearance struck no one as unnatural, while he answered his mother’s enquiries about the Tollemaches, and described the beauties of Civita Bella—rather proud to find that he could do it so easily. Moreover, the home party had an absorbing interest of their own; and as soon as the match had ended, in the triumph of Redhurst, Mrs Crichton took her son’s arm to walk home with him, and Mysie and Arthur slipped away by a different path through the lanes.
Arthur put out his hand and took hold of Mysie’s, and they walked on for a bit hand in hand—a fashion Mysie favoured, perhaps as reminding her of holiday afternoons, when Arthur’s big-boy companionship had been so flattering and delightful to the little school-girl. The air was scented with meadow-sweet and with hay; the elms, in full leaf, threw heavy shadows across their path; a thrush was singing; the church clock chimed half-past six; everything was full of peaceful beauty. Mysie looked shyly into Arthur’s eyes, and then they both laughed; they were not really afraid or in suspense as to their fate, only Arthur wished that the decisive interview was over. “Suppose, for the sake of supposing,” he said, “that Hugh was really to act the cruel parent and send me away. What should you do, Mysie?”
“I don’t know,” said Mysie, lightly. “If he locked me up I think I should give in to him.”
“Then I should blow my brains out!” said Arthur. “I don’t know why I am talking such nonsense,” he added. “I know there is no reasonable likelihood of any interference; but sometimes, Mysie, it comes over me to think what have I done to deserve, what so few fellows get—my first love—nothing in the way? Everything in my life has gone well with me.”
“We must be very good,” said Mysie, in a low voice.
Arthur half shook his head. He was not given to talk about himself, or even to think much about himself from a critical point of view, but he felt that life had been made uncommonly easy to him, by circumstances, by temperament, and by the lodestar of Mysie’s love; and it, perhaps, proved that he was not spoiled by prosperity; since, with the stirring of the deepest feeling that he had ever known, there came a profound sense of these blessings and an almost exaggerated conviction of the absence of effort by which they had been attained.
“I have done nothing to deserve any of it,” he thought. “My work was pleasant to me. How could I go wrong with her before my eyes?” The kind actions, the ready aid which won much affection, the quick interest in all around him which made him helpful and useful everywhere—what had these ever cost him? More pains, perhaps, and more virtuous effort than he remembered or thought worth mentioning; but it was true that Arthur’s was a gracious nature, so kindly and genial that, though his life had been singularly blameless, he had hardly been conscious of aims above the average.
Mysie cut into the heart of his perplexity.
“I think it would be very ungrateful,” she said, “not to be glad that we are happy. We should be very thankful to God for it, and try to make other people happy, too; and trials are sure to come in this life,” she added, in her sweet, fearless, untried voice.
“You shall have few, my darling, if I can keep them away. But you are right; and it would be strange, indeed, if one were not thankful—for you.”