“Oh, Chris, there’s only one woman in the world for me. Could you—even now? Could you let me stand between you and the world? Could you, Chris? If you only knew what I cannot put into words. I’d try so hard to make you happy.”
“I knaw, I knaw. But theer’s no human life so long as the road to happiness, Martin. And yet—”
He took her hand and for a moment she did not resist him. Then little Tim’s voice chimed out merrily at the stream margin, and the music had instant effect upon Chris Blanchard.
She drew her hand from Martin and the next moment he saw his dead bluebells hurrying away and parting company for ever on the dancing water. Chris watched them until they vanished; then she turned and looked at him, to find that he grew very pale and agitated. Even his humility had hardly foreseen this decisive answer after the yielding attitude Chris first assumed when she suffered him to hold her hand. He looked into her face inquiring and frightened. The silence that followed was broken by continued laughter and shouting from Timothy. Then Martin tried to connect the child’s first merriment with the simultaneous change in the mood of the woman he worshipped, but failed to do so.
At that moment Chris spoke. She made utterance under the weight of great emotion and with evident desire to escape the necessity of a direct negative, while yet leaving her refusal of Martin’s offer implicit and distinct.
“I mind when a scatter of paper twinkled down this river just like them dead blossoms. Clem thrawed them, an’ they floated away to the sea, past daffadowndillies an’ budding lady-ferns an’ such-like. ’T was a li’l bit of poetry he’d made up to please me—and I, fule as I was, didn’t say the right thing when he axed me what I thought; so Clem tore the rhymes in pieces an’ sent them away. He said the river would onderstand. An’ the river onderstands why I dropped them dead blossoms in, tu. A wise, ancient stream, I doubt. An’ you ’m wise, tu; an’ can take my answer wi’out any more words, as will awnly make both our hearts ache.”
“Not even if I wait patiently? You couldn’t marry me, dear Chris? You couldn’t get to love me?”
“I couldn’t marry you. I’m a widow in heart for all time. But I thank God for the gude-will of such a man as you. I cherish it and ’t will be dear to me all my life. But I caan’t come to ’e, so doan’t ax it.”
“Yet you’re young to live for a memory, Chris.”
“Better ’n nothing. And listen; I’ll tell you this, if ’t will make my ‘No’ sound less hard to your ear. I loves you—I loves you better ’n any living man ’cept Will, an’ not less than I love even him. I wish I could bring ’e a spark of joy by marryin’ you, for you was allus very gude, an’ thought kindly of Clem when but few did. I’d marry you if ’t was awnly for that; yet it caan’t never be, along o’ many reasons. You must take that cold comfort, Martin.”