Could that be it? Could that be the cause of her white looks, her weary eyes, her wasted figure, her struggling sobs? This idea came upon me like a flash of lightning on a dark night, making all things so clear we cannot forget them afterwards when the gloomy obscurity returns. I was still standing with the book in my hand when I heard cousin Holman’s footsteps on the stairs, and as I did not wish to speak to her just then, I followed Phillis’s example, and rushed out of the house. The snow was lying on the ground; I could track her feet by the marks they had made; I could see where Rover had joined her. I followed on till I came to a great stack of wood in the orchard—it was built up against the back wall of the outbuildings,—and I recollected then how Phillis had told me, that first day when we strolled about together, that underneath this stack had been her hermitage, her sanctuary, when she was a child; how she used to bring her book to study there, or her work, when she was not wanted in the house; and she had now evidently gone back to this quiet retreat of her childhood, forgetful of the clue given me by her footmarks on the new-fallen snow. The stack was built up very high; but through the interstices of the sticks I could see her figure, although I did not all at once perceive how I could get to her. She was sitting on a log of wood, Rover by her. She had laid her cheek on Rover’s head, and had her arm round his neck, partly for a pillow, partly from an instinctive craving for warmth on that bitter cold day. She was making a low moan, like an animal in pain, or perhaps more like the sobbing of the wind. Rover, highly flattered by her caress, and also, perhaps, touched by sympathy, was flapping his heavy tail against the ground, but not otherwise moving a hair, until he heard my approach with his quick erected ears. Then, with a short, abrupt bark of distrust, he sprang up as if to leave his mistress. Both he and I were immovably still for a moment. I was not sure if what I longed to do was wise: and yet I could not bear to see the sweet serenity of my dear cousin’s life so disturbed by a suffering which I thought I could assuage. But Rover’s ears were sharper than my breathing was noiseless: he heard me, and sprang out from under Phillis’s restraining hand.
“Oh, Rover, don’t you leave me, too,” she plained out.
“Phillis!” said I, seeing by Rover’s exit that the entrance to where she sate was to be found on the other side of the stack. “Phillis, come out! You have got a cold already; and it is not fit for you to sit there on such a day as this. You know how displeased and anxious it would make them all.”
She sighed, but obeyed; stooping a little, she came out, and stood upright, opposite to me in the lonely, leafless orchard. Her face looked so meek and so sad that I felt as if I ought to beg her pardon for my necessarily authoritative words.
“Sometimes I feel the house so close,” she said; “and I used to sit under the wood-stack when I was a child. It was very kind of you, but there was no need to come after me. I don’t catch cold easily.”
“Come with me into this cow-house, Phillis. I have got something to say to you; and I can’t stand this cold, if you can.”
I think she would have fain run away again; but her fit of energy was all spent. She followed me unwillingly enough that I could see. The place to which I took her was full of the fragrant breath of the cows, and was a little warmer than the outer air. I put her inside, and stood myself in the doorway, thinking how I could best begin. At last I plunged into it.
“I must see that you don’t get cold for more reasons than one; if you are ill, Holdsworth will be so anxious and miserable out there” (by which I meant Canada)—
She shot one penetrating look at me, and then turned her face away with a slightly impatient movement. If she could have run away then she would, but I held the means of exit in my own power. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” thought I, and I went on rapidly, anyhow.
“He talked so much about you, just before he left—that night after he had been here, you know—and you had given him those flowers.” She put her hands up to hide her face, but she was listening now—listening with all her ears. “He had never spoken much about you before, but the sudden going away unlocked his heart, and he told me how he loved you, and how he hoped on his return that you might be his wife.”