Oh! happy, happy was the life that began for these two this night. Soon Rupert was installed in a little house not far from Mea’s, and the wide, neglected lands were in his care. He worked early and late, and made them to blossom like the rose, so that wealth began to flow into the oasis of Tama. Then in the evenings when the work was done, he and Mea would eat together, and talk together, and read and study together, and together daily grow more changed and wise. But at an appointed hour they shook each other by the hand and separated, and on the morrow that blessed, peaceful round began again.
He was her world, her life, the very altar of her faith, whence the pure incense of her heart went up in ceaseless sacrifice to Heaven. She was his love, his light, his star—all this yet unattained—as stars must be.
CHAPTER XIX.
AFTER SEVEN YEARS
On the Tuesday after his Sunday luncheon with Edith, Dick called at the Brook Street rooms as arranged, this time for afternoon tea. He found Edith gloomy and upset, not at all in a mood indeed to respond to his demonstrations of affection. He asked her what was the matter, but could get no satisfactory answer out of her, and so at last went away in disgust, reflecting that of all women whom he had known, Edith was the most uncertain and bewildering.
Thus things went on for some time, interviews being alternated with letters sufficiently compromising in their allusions to what had passed between them, until, when actually forced into a corner, Edith informed him that her change of conduct was owing to a dream that she had dreamed in which she saw Rupert alive and well. Of course Dick laughed at her dream, but still she made it serve her turn for quite another three months. Then at length there came a day when he would be put off no longer.
The six months of silence for which she had stipulated were, he pointed out, more than gone by, and he proposed, therefore, to announce their engagement in the usual fashion.
“You must not,” she said, springing up; “I forbid you. If you do so I will contradict it, and never speak to you again.”
Now, exasperated beyond endurance, Dick’s evil temper broke out. Even to Edith it was a revelation, for she had never seen him in such a rage before. He swore at her; he called her names which she had not been accustomed to hear; he said that she was a bad woman who, having married Ullershaw for his rank and prospects, was now trying to break his—Dick’s—heart for fun; that she had been the curse of his existence, and he hoped that it would all come back upon her own head, and so forth.
Edith, as a rule, was perfectly able to look after herself, but on this occasion the man’s violence was too much for her who had never before been exposed to rough abuse. She grew frightened, and in her fear blurted out the truth.
“I can’t marry you,” she said, “and perhaps it is as well, as I don’t wish to put up with this sort of thing.”