"Pshaw," he muttered, turning angrily away. Was she fooling him after all? He was not a man who would ever understand coquetry or caprice; such things would have simply disgusted him; but then he knew Dora was no coquette. "She is trying to manage me for some purpose of her own; she wants me to come to a certain point and no further; she is showing me very plainly what she means," he said to himself, repulsed and yet attracted in spite of himself by this strange conduct. After all the plane-tree walk and the sunset, now he had them, were failures. He had not once this evening called her Dora. How could he, with Cathy walking there beside them, and noting his discomfiture with her keen girlish eyes. True, he had not known what he would have said to her if they had been alone; sentiment was only just waking up in Garth's nature. A week or two ago he would have pronounced himself heart-whole, would have laughed at the notion of his being in love. Why had a sudden fancy come to him for golden hair and sunsets, and quiet evening strolls? Was he feeling dimly after something? was this restlessness, this indefinable longing after some visionary ideal, a part of the disease?
Garth could not have answered these questions if his life depended on it. He had ceased to be satisfied with his sister's company. A craving after some new excitement made itself very plainly felt at this time. His pulses were throbbing with fresh life; the world was before him, the young man's world; he had only to look round him and choose. Strong, keen-eyed, vigorous, with dominant will and sober judgment, what obstacle need he dread? what impediments could he not overcome?
Hitherto freedom, and the mystery obscuring his future fate, had had a strange charm in Garth's eyes. It had pleased him to know that such things were for him when he should stoop and open his hand to receive the best gift of heaven. "I suppose I shall fall in love some day, every one does; but there is plenty of time for that sort of thing," he often said to his sisters, and there had been an amused look upon his face, as though the notion pleased him.
But, in spite of his young man's conceit, Garth had an old-fashioned reverence in speaking on such subjects. It would not be too much to say that he stood, as it were, bare-headed on holy ground. One evening, shortly after Queenie's return from Carlisle, Cathy had been repeating to them scraps of poetry as they sat round the open window in the twilight, and by-and-bye she commenced in a low voice reciting some quaint old lines of Arnold, in which this craving for an unknown love is most touchingly depicted.
"Thou art as I—
Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;
We cannot live apart must meeting be
Never before we die?
"Dear soul, not so!
That time doth keep for us some happy years,
That God hath portion'd out our smiles and tears,
Thou knowest, and I know.
"Yes, we shall meet!
And therefore let our searching be the stronger:
Dark days of life shall not divide us longer.
Nor doubt, nor danger, sweet!
"Therefore I bear
This winter-tide as bravely as I may,
Patiently waiting for the bright spring-day
That cometh with thee, dear."
"How beautiful!" sighed Langley. "I have always been so fond of those lines. Your new song, 'My Queen.' embodies the same meaning, Cathy." But Garth said nothing; he only sat for a long time shading his eyes with his hand, and there was a certain moved look on his face when he uncovered it as though he had been strongly affected.
But ever since that evening the restlessness had grown upon him, and there had been a certain carping fastidiousness in his manner to his sisters; and once or twice he had used Dora's name as a sort of reproach. "If you were only as good a manager as Miss Cunningham, Langley;" or "I wish you would read more, and choose your books as sensibly as Miss Dora does, Cathy."