“But you are going away,” she reminded him, in a soft monotone. “You have your own unpleasantnesses to think of—and you are occupied with plans for rearranging your life on new lines. I only hope that you will find the happiness you are setting out in search of. But then men can always get what they want, if they are only sufficiently in earnest about it.”
“It is not entirely settled that I shall go away,” said Christian. He twisted the lace in the reverse direction, and hesitated over his further words. “That was only one of several alternatives. I am clear only about my resolve to make a stand—to break away. But if I remained here in England—in London?”—He looked with mingled trepidation and inquiry into her face. “If I did not go abroad—is there anything I could do?”
She regarded with attentiveness the hand which was playing havoc with her flounce—and it straightway desisted. She continued to study the little screwed-up cone of lace, in meditative silence. At last she shook her head. “You must not give it another thought,” she said, but with no touch of dictation in her musing tone. Her eyes dwelt upon him with a remote and ruminating gaze. “I belong to a past generation. My chances in the lottery are all exhausted—things of the past. You must not bother about me. And I think you ought to give up those ideas of yours about breaking away, as you call it. London hasn’t been made pleasant for you, simply because the wrong people have gone the wrong way about it to arrange matters for you. But there are extremely nice people among the set you know, if you once understood them. With your position, you can command any kind of associations you wish to have. After it is all said and done, I think England has its full share of cultivated and refined people of intelligence. I have not seen much of the Continent, but I do not believe that it possesses any superiority over us in that respect.”
“But in your own case,” urged Christian, somewhat hazily; “you said that there were no honest people about you to warn you—though you were in the best society. That is my feeling—that you do not get the truth from them. They do not lie to you—but they are silent about the truth.”
“Is it different elsewhere?” she asked, gravely. “Is not the young girl sold everywhere? Do you think that marriage is a more sacred and ethereal thing among the great families of France or Austria or Germany than it is with us? I have heard differently.”
“Oh, we are all equally uncivilized about women,” he admitted. “I feel very strongly about that. But you, who have such knowledge and such clear opinions—would you not love to do something to alter this injustice to women? The thought has been much in my mind, of late.” He paused to reflect in fleeting wonderment upon the fact that only this morning he had been absorbed in it. “And my meaning is,” he stumbled on, “there is nothing I would rather devote my life to than the task of making existence easier and broader and more free for young women. Could there be any finer work than that? I know that it appeals to you.”
She looked at him with an element of doubt in her glance. “Nothing appeals very much to me—and I’m afraid my sex least of all. I do not like them, to tell the truth. I never get over the surprised disgust of waking up in the morning and finding that I am one of them. But this is rather wandering from the point, isn’t it? I was urging you to give over the notion of making a demonstration. You have waited thus long; be content to wait just a little longer. My private belief is that the Duke will not live the week out.”
Still, the assurance seemed to suggest nothing to him. “But if he dies,” he protested, “how then will I be different? I am lonely—I am like a forlorn man escaped on a raft from a shipwreck—I eat my heart out in friendless solitude. And if I have a great title—why, then I shall be more alone than ever. It is that way with such men—I have seen that they hold themselves aloof—and others do not come freely near them. It frightens me—the thought of living without friends. I say to you solemnly that I would give it all—the position, the authority and dignity, the estates, Caermere, everything—for the assurance of one warm, human heart answering in every beat to mine! Has friendship perished out of the world, then? Or has it never existed, except in the books?”
Her beauty had never been so manifest to him, as now while he gazed at her, and she did not speak. There seemed the faint, delicate hint of a tenderness in the classical lines of the face that he had not seen before. It was as if his appeal had brought forth some latent aptitude of romance, to mellow the direct glance of her eyes, and soften in some subtle way the whole charm of her presence. A new magic was visible in her loveliness—and the sense that his words had conjured it into being thrilled him with a wistful pride. No woman had thus moved him heretofore. The perception that she was plastic to his mental touch—that this flower-like marvel of comeliness and grace, of exquisite tastes and pure dignity of soul, could be swayed by his suggestion, would vibrate at the tone of his voice—awed him as if he were confronted by a miracle. His breath came and went under a dull consciousness of pain—which was yet more like pleasure. A bell sounded somewhere within the house, and its brief crystal resonance seemed somehow to clarify the ferment of his thoughts. All at once, as by the flooding of sunlight into a darkened labyrinth, his mind was clear to him. He knew what he wanted—nay, what all the years had been leading him up to desire.
With his gaze maintained upon her face—timidly yet with rapturous intentness, as if fearful of breaking the spell—he rose to his feet, and stood over her. A confusion of unspoken words trembled on his lips, as her slow glance lifted itself to his.