“Oh! ought I to do it, ought I to do it?” exclaimed Harriet, with a look of despair.
“If you don’t I’ll shoot myself. I swear it!”
“No! no! darling, don’t say that! It is of you alone that I am thinking! God forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I feel that I cannot refuse you! Take me and do with me as you think best.”
After which it came to pass, that Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Pennell started in very high spirits for Dover, by the four o’clock train that afternoon.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A fortnight afterwards, the married couple found themselves at Nice. Much as has been said and sung of the lune de miel, none ever surpassed, if it ever reached, this one in happiness. Harriet passed the time in a silent ecstasy of delight. Her cup of bliss was filled to overflowing; her satisfaction was too deep for words. To this girl, for whom the world had been seen as yet only through the barred windows of a convent—who had never enjoyed the society of an intellectual companion before; who had viewed no scenery but that of the Island; seen no records of the past; and visited no foreign capital—the first weeks of her married life were a panorama of novelties, her days one long astonishment and delight.
She could not adore Anthony Pennell sufficiently for having afforded her the opportunity of seeing all this, and more especially of feeling it. The presents he lavished upon her were as nothing in her eyes, compared to the lover-like attentions he paid her; the bouquets of flowers he brought her every morning; the glass of lemonade or milk he had ready to supply her need when they were taking their excursions; the warm shawl or mantle he carried on his arm in the evenings, lest the air should become too chilly for her delicate frame after sunset. Money Harriet had no need of, but love—love she had thirsted for, as the hart thirsts for the water-streams, yet had never imagined it could be poured out at her feet, as her husband poured it now.
And Pennell, on the other hand, though he had been much sought after and flattered by the fair sex for the sake of the fame he had acquired and the money he made, had never lost his heart to any woman as he had done to his little unknown wife. He had never met anyone like Hally before. She combined the intelligence of the Englishwoman with the espièglerie of the French—the devotion of the Creole with the fiery passion of the Spanish or Italian. He could conceive her quite capable of dying silently and uncomplainingly for him, or anyone she loved; or on the other hand stabbing her lover without remorse if roused by jealousy or insult.
He was hourly discovering new traits in her character which delighted him, because they were so utterly unlike any possessed by the women of the world, with whom he had hitherto associated. He felt as though he had captured some beautiful wild creature and was taming it for his own pleasure.
Harriet would sit for hours at a time in profound silence, contemplating his features or watching his actions—crouched on the floor at his feet, until he was fain to lay down his book or writing, and take to fondling her instead. She was an ever-constant joy to him; he felt it would be impossible to do anything to displease her so long as he loved her—that like the patient Griselda she would submit to any injustice and meekly call it justice if from his hand. And yet he knew all the while that the savage in her was not tamed—that at any moment, like the domesticated lion or tiger, her nature might assert itself and become furious, wild and intractable. It was the very uncertainty that pleased him; men love the women of whom they are not quite certain, all the more. From Nice they wandered to Mentone, but the proximity of the Monte Carlo tables had no charm for Anthony Pennell. He was not a speculative man: his brain was filled with better things, and he only visited such places for the sake of reproduction. Although the autumn was now far advanced, the air of Mentone was too enervating to suit either of them, and Pennell proposed that they should move on to Italy.