“We have nothing in this world to wait for,” he said.
“Except a young lady’s caprice,” answered the Colonel. “Eve will be too happy in the pleasures of courtship to be anxious for the final step. And then there will be her trousseau to prepare. That will take time.”
“My mother can help her in all those details,” said Vansittart, thinking that in all probability his mother would have to pay for as well as to choose the wedding finery. “We can take all that trouble off your hands, Colonel Marchant.”
He wrote to his mother on Sunday night, when his sister’s household and guests were hushed in their first sleep; wrote at fullest length, dwelling fondly upon the graces and perfections of her whom he had chosen.
“She will love you dearly, if you will let her,” he wrote; “she will be to you as a second daughter—nearer to you, perhaps, than Maud can now be; for, if you will have it so, our lives may be spent mostly together, in a triple bond of love. I know not what your inclination may be, but for my own part I see no reason why we should not live as one household. Merewood is large enough for a much larger family than ours could be for years to come. Eve has been so long motherless that she would the more gladly welcome motherly love and solicitude. Think of it all, mother, and act in all things as may be most congenial to yourself. I would ask no sacrifices, but I do ask you to love my wife.”
This letter written, he could lay himself down to rest with an unburdened spirit, could fearlessly enter dreamland, knowing that his love would be with him in the land of shadows.
Strange, cruel irony, that the scene of his dreams should be Venice, where he and Eve were wandering confusedly, now on land, now on sea, greatly troubled by petty disturbances, and continually losing each other in labyrinthine streets and on slippery sea-washed stairs. Stranger still that Venice should be unlike Venice, and indeed unlike any place he had ever seen in his life.
The dream was but a natural sequence of Eve’s talk about Italy. It had hurt him that one of her first utterances after their betrothal should express her desire to visit a land whose frontier he would never willingly cross again. He had loved Italy with all his heart; but now the image of Venice burnt and festered in his mind like a plague-spot on the breast of a man in full health. All except that one accursed memory was peace.
CHAPTER XIII.
“THE TIME OF LOVERS IS BRIEF.”