How much the grave benevolence of Mr. Germain may have gained by this little contretemps we may guess. Broad vistas, after all, are very well indeed for the robust; they are bracing and tonic. But if I am to be snug, give me rosy mists.
X
CRATYLUS WITH MARINA: THE INCREDIBLE WORD
Upon the day designed by highest Heaven—as we are led to suppose—they took the way of Misperton Park, the enamoured gentleman and the lady. They sat under the famous Royal Oak—a shade with which she was, we know, familiar—Cratylus talked, Marina sat modestly listening. If he saw her the spirit of the tree—the peering Dryad Mero caught and held to his words, it’s all one. Her simple allure, her dainty reserves had ravished his senses; the tinge of sunburn in her cheeks, the glint of conscious pride in her eyes, beat back like blown flame upon his blood. That fired his brain. In a word, he loved, therefore he believed.
He spoke of himself to-day, of his youth and marriage. Lady Diana was not named, but her knife under the cloak was implied. Sadly, yet without complaint, he related the ossifying of all his generous hopes. “This,” he said, “was long ago, but the dead cannot all at once be hidden under the turf. I have been ten years long at a burying, and now have done. What remain to me of years, I know not truly; but they will be the more precious if they are to be few. I believe that I am very capable of happiness—perhaps even of bestowing it. My affairs are in good order; I have been fortunate, as you know, in worldly respects. A childless widower, I pick up my life again at fifty where I left it at five-and-twenty. And I tell myself—I have told myself but newly—that I may not be too late.”
To this sort of soliloquy, to the grave voice that rehearsed it, she had nothing to say. He found that he must import her bodily into his conversation.
“For one thing,” he continued, after a pause of exploration, “I now have leisure, as you have seen, to interest myself in my neighbours, and have derived so much pleasure from it that I am deeply grateful to those who have indulged me. You are one. I think that you must have remarked what happiness your society and your confidence have been to me.” Her shamefastness, which tied her tongue, compelled him to probe. “Have you not seen that?”
She murmured that he had been very kind, that she was grateful. “Not so, my dear,” said he, “but the persons must be transposed. The kindness is yours, the obligation upon me. Come! Can you not tell me that you have understood me? Can you not let me be satisfied that you realize your own benevolence? If you cannot, I must withhold what I was about to say to you. I should want for courage. I must ask for your assurance. You will not refuse it?”
Exciting, mystifying talk! She dared not look up—but she asked him, What it was that she was to tell him?
He luxuriated in her bashfulness. “Why, my dearest child,” he said, very near to her, “I want to know whether you believe me happy in your company?”
She would not look at him, but she said “I hope that you like me—I do hope that.”