“You think them strange?” she said—“You should not,—in these ‘new women’ days! I believe that, thanks to newspapers, magazines and ‘decadent’ novels, I am in all respects eminently fitted to be a wife!” and she laughed bitterly—“There is nothing in the rôle of marriage that I do not know, though I am not yet twenty. I have been prepared for a long time to be sold to the highest bidder, and what few silly notions I had about love,—the love of the poets and idealists,—when I was a dreamy child at Willowsmere, are all dispersed and ended. Ideal love is dead,—and worse than dead, being out of fashion. Carefully instructed as I have been in the worthlessness of everything but money, you can scarcely be surprised at my speaking of myself as an object of sale. Marriage for me is a sale, as far as my father is concerned,—for you know well enough that however much you loved me or I loved you, he would never allow me to marry you if you were not rich, and richer than most men. I want you to feel that I fully recognize the nature of the bargain struck; and I ask you not to expect a girl’s fresh, confiding love from a woman as warped in heart and mind as I am!”
“Sibyl,”—I said earnestly—“You wrong yourself; I am sure you wrong yourself! You are one of those who can be in the world yet not of it; your mind is too open and pure to be sullied, even by contact with evil things. I will believe nothing you say against your own sweet and noble character,—and, Sibyl, let me again ask you not to distress me by this constant harping on the subject of my wealth, or I shall be inclined to look upon it as a curse,—I should love you as much if I were poor——”
“Oh, you might love me”—she interrupted me, with a strange smile—“but you would not dare to say so!”
I was silent. Suddenly she laughed, and linked her arms caressingly round my neck.
[p 205]
“There, Geoffrey!” she said—“I have finished my discourse,—my bit of Ibsenism, or whatever other ism affects me,—and we need not be miserable about it. I have said what was in my mind; I have told you the truth, that in heart I am neither young nor innocent. But I am no worse than all my ‘set’ so perhaps you had better make the best of me. I please your fancy, do I not?”
“My love for you cannot be so lightly expressed, Sibyl!” I answered in rather a pained tone.
“Never mind,—it is my humour so to express it”—she went on—“I please your fancy, and you wish to marry me. Well now, all I ask is, go to my father and buy me at once! Conclude the bargain! And when you have bought me,—don’t look so tragic!” and she laughed again—“and when you have paid the clergyman, and paid the bridesmaids (with monogram lockets or brooches) and paid the guests (with wedding-cake and champagne) and cleared up all scores with everybody, even to the last man who shuts the door of the nuptial brougham,—will you take me away,—far away from this place—this house, where my mother’s face haunts me like a ghost in the darkness; where I am tortured by terrors night and day,—where I hear such strange sounds, and dream of such ghastly things,—” here her voice suddenly broke, and she hid her face against my breast—“Oh yes, Geoffrey, take me away as quickly as possible! Let us never live in hateful London, but at Willowsmere; I may find some of the old joys there,—and some of the happy bygone days.”
Touched by the appealing pathos of her accents, I pressed her to my heart, feeling that she was scarcely accountable for the strange things she said in her evidently overwrought and excitable condition.
“It shall be as you wish, my darling,” I said—“The sooner I have you all to myself the better. This is the end of March,—will you be ready to marry me in June?”
“Yes,” she answered, still hiding her face.