The Witch's Head

by H. Rider Haggard

“Why should I put the dog down?” she asked, with a quick look of defiance.

“Because I hate to see you kissing it; it is so effeminate.”

He spoke in a masterful way; it was a touch of the curb, and there are few things a proud woman hates so much as the first touch of the curb.

“What right have you to dictate what I shall or shall not do?” she asked, tapping her foot upon the floor.

Ernest was very humble in those days, and he collapsed.

“None at all. Don’t be angry, Eva” (it was the first time that he had called her so; till now she had always been Miss Ceswick), “but the fact was I could not bear to see you kissing that dog; I was jealous of the brute.”

Whereupon she blushed furiously and changed the subject. But after a while Eva’s coquettishness began to be less and less marked. When they met she no longer greeted him with a smile of mischief, but with serious eyes that once or twice, he thought, bore traces of tears. At the same time she threw him into despair by her coldness. Did he venture a tender remark, she would pretend not to hear it—alas, that the mounting blood should so obstinately proclaim that she did! Did he touch her hand, it was cold and unresponsive. She was quieter too, and her reserve frightened him. Once he tried to break it, and began some passionate appeal, but she rose without answering and turned her face to the window. He followed her, and saw that her dark eyes were full of tears. This he felt was even more awful than her coldness, and, fearing that he had offended her, he obeyed her whispered entreaty and went. Poor boy! he was very young. Had he had a little more experience, he might have found means to brush away her tears and his own doubts. It is a melancholy thing that such opportunities should, as a rule, present themselves before people are old enough to take advantage of them.

The secret of all this change of conduct was not far to seek. Eva had played with edged tools till she cut her fingers to the bone. The dark-eyed boy, who danced so well and had such a handsome, happy face, had become very dear to her. She had begun by playing with him, and now, alas! she loved him better than anybody in the world. That was the sting of the thing; she had fallen in love with a boy as young as herself—a boy, too, who, so far as she was aware, had no particular prospects in life. It was humiliating to her pride to think that she, who in the few months that she had been “out” in London, before her cousins rose up and cast her forth, had already found the satisfaction of seeing one or two men of middle age and established position at her feet, and the further satisfaction of requesting them to kneel there no more, should in the upshot have to strike her colours to a boy of twenty-one, even though he did stand six feet high, and had more wits in his young head and more love in his young heart than all her middle-aged admirers put together.

Perhaps, though she was a woman grown, she was not herself quite old enough to appreciate the great advantage it is to any girl to stamp her image upon the heart of the man she loves while the wax is yet soft and undefaced by the half worn-out marks of many shallow dies; perhaps she did not know what a blessing it is to be able to really love a man at all, young, middle-aged, or old. Many women wait till they cannot love without shame to make that discovery. Perhaps she forgot that Ernest’s youth was a fault which would mend day by day, and he had abilities, which, if she would consent to inspire them, might lead him to great things. At any rate, two facts remained in her mind after much thinking: she loved him with all her heart, and she was ashamed of it.

But as yet she could not make up her mind to any fixed course. It would have been easy to crush poor Ernest, to tell him that his pretensions were ridiculous, to send him away, or to go away herself, and so to make an end of a position that she felt was getting absurd, and which we may be sure her elder sister Florence did nothing to make more pleasant. But she could not do it; that was the long and short of the matter. The idea of living without Ernest made her feel cold all over; it seemed to her that the only hours that she really did live were the hours which they spent together, and that when he went away he took her heart with him. No, she could not make up her mind to that; the thought was too cruel. Then there was the other alternative—to encourage him a little and become engaged to him, to brave everything for his sake. But as yet she could not make up her mind to that either.