I leant forward and looked at him. "We mustn't care what she sees, what she thinks, if only we can go on loving her."
"'Can, can'?" echoed Mr Crimble, "I have prayed on my knees not to."
This was a sharp ray on my thoughts of love. "But why?" I said. "Even when I was a child, I knew by my mother's face that I must go on, and should go on, loving her, Mr Crimble, whether she loved me or not. One can't make a bad mistake in giving, can one? And yet—well, you must remember that I cannot but have been a—a disappointment; that as long as I live I can't expect any great affection, any disproportionate one, I mean."
"But, but," he stumbled on, "a daughter's affection—it's different. I mustn't brood on my trouble. It unhinges me. Why, the clock stops. But nevertheless may God bless you for that."
"But surely," I persisted, smiling as cheerfully as I could, "Nil desperandum, Mr Crimble. And you know what they say about fish in the sea."
His eye rolled round on me as if a serpent had spoken. "I am sorry, I am sorry," he repeated rapidly, in the same low, unemphatic undertone as if to himself. "I must just wait. You have never seen a sheep—a bullock, shall we call him?—being driven to the slaughter-house. On, on—from despair to despair. That's my position." His face was emptied of expression, his eyes fixed.
These words, his air, his look, this awful private thing—I can't say—it shocked and frightened me beyond words. But I answered him steadily none the less. "Listen, Mr Crimble," I said, "look at me, here, what I am. I have had my desperate moments too—more alone in the world than you can ever be! And I swear before God that I will never, never be not myself." I wonder what the listener thought of this little challenge, not perhaps what Mr Crimble did.
"Well," he replied, with sudden calm, "that's the courage of the martyrs, and not all of them perhaps have been Christians, if history is to be credited. Yes, and in sober truth, I assure you, you, that I would go to the stake for—for Miss Bowater."
He rose, and in that instant of dignity I foresaw what was never to be—lawn sleeves encasing those loose, black arms. He had somehow wafted me back to my Confirmation.
"And the letter? I have no wish to intrude. But her actual words. I mayn't see that?"