“O Clide, Clide! is this what you promised me?” she cried, her voice still broken with sobs. “Is this my dream? or was it only a dream, nothing but the baseless fabric of a vision?”
She clasped her hands, and, throwing back her head, fixed her eyes on the ceiling, as if the vision were disappearing in that direction, and she were straining for a last glimpse of it.
I was so spell-bound by the extraordinary beauty that borrowed a new charm from her emotions and from the despairing tenderness of her voice and manner that I entirely lost sight of every other point in the picture. In fact, I lost my head. I was after all no more than a man, and the wisest of us is but a fool in the hands of a woman. What could I do but what I did do? Fall upon my knees and swear that she should have Arcadia back again, [pg 611] adjure her to build up a new vision, and, if she loved me, never to talk about baseless fabrics and such like again; and as to her sinking down into a humdrum wife, it was preposterous nonsense. She could never be anything but an archangel to me, and that.... But why do I bear witness in this wanton way to my own folly? We made up our quarrel, as all such quarrels are intended to be made up. Isabel went to her room, and I went round to the stables. I had no fancy for meeting my step-mother just now, and I had a vague sense of something having gone wrong with me which a gallop over the downs would set right.
It was a cold February morning—bitterly cold, but bright and bracing, just the sort of day to enjoy a ride across country; so as soon as I was out of the park I set spurs to my horse and galloped away, taking flying leaps over everything, hurdle, and ditch, and brook, as if the hounds were ahead, and my life staked on being in at the death. After five miles of this going-in-for-the-Derby pace I drew rein at the foot of a hill, and walked my horse to the top. The hard riding had made him so hot that his flanks smoked like a steam-engine, and sent up clouds of vapor that enveloped me in a tepid bath; but I did not feel that the violent exercise had produced any effect on myself. I was not clear as to the nature of the effect I had expected, and still less could I analyze the cause that demanded it. Something was wrong somewhere. I looked about me vacantly, persistently, as men do when they feel they ought to look within themselves for the object of their search, and dare not.
I cast my eyes to the sky. It was as blue as liquid sapphire, and as cloudless. But it said nothing to me. The river winding round the foot of the wooded hill was ice-bound and silent as death. The trees stood up naked and grim against the blue, like skeleton giants, and whispered nothing. There was no rustle of leafy tongues. They were dead and gone down into the dumb sod. There was no ripple of tiny cascades; no buzzing of insects holding council in the grass that grew high and free on the hill-side; no song amongst the birds. Nothing spoke to me. Everything was dumb. Everything was cold. Everything was a disappointment. I began to whistle. The sound of my own voice echoed merrily through the wood, but it woke no responsive note from linnet or blackbird or robin. Silence everywhere.
“What can it mean?” I said aloud, the apostrophe not being addressed to the birds that could sing, and would not sing, but to my own perplexity concerning the scene at the breakfast-table. There was something out of all reason in the passionate energy Isabel had displayed. Excuse it as my heart and my vanity would on the ground of a jealous love that shrank from any intrusion on our solitude capable of distracting my thoughts from her, which she chiefly urged as her motive of dislike to my two friends' visit, I could not see it in a satisfactory light. Again, it was simply preposterous that a girl of one-and-twenty, who had seen even as little of the world as Isabel had, could be so morbidly shy as to cry herself into hysterics at the mere idea of being introduced to two old gentlemen in her own house. There was some motive in the background which it behooved me for my own peace of mind to discover.
Removed from the magnetic influence of her beauty, and her distress, and her pretty, endearing ways, I was able to look back dispassionately at the morning's entertainment; and the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. The undisciplined outburst of temper which revealed to me the painful fact that Socrates was henceforth to be my model, and patience under an inevitable evil the sustained effort of my life, was in itself no small matter for regret. But this, though the most tangible of my cares, was not the one that chiefly possessed me. No; I could have signed away every penny of my wife's fortune on the spot to feel sure that it had been a genuine outbreak of mere temper; but it was borne in on me, not by circumstantial, but by strong internal evidence that she was actuated by fear. Fear of whom? Of what? What could her young life have done, or suffered, or known, that she should be afraid? Her uncle had been very tyrannical, and was now very much incensed with her on account of her marriage. But she had nothing to fear from him now. He might storm and fume, but she was out of his reach; he could not hurt her. Besides, she had not hinted at any fear of malice or vengeance on his part as a reason for shunning the society or acquaintance of other men. Who or what was she afraid of? “She hated fuss, and I promised her this and that and the other.”
Nonsense! Two old friends of my father's sleeping a night or two in the house did not constitute a fuss. “She hated trustees; they were always....” Stop! No; I'm a fool and a brute to wrong the child by such a thought. Besides, I never hinted, even indirectly, at anything like inquiries and settlements. I avoided the subject scrupulously. No; there could be nothing in that.
The fact is, the dear child is in love with me, and wants to play at Romeo and Juliet for the rest of her life; and here am I, like a born idiot, making a mountain out of a mole-hill, instead of blessing my stars for my luck. This, by a natural train of thought, led me to picture her standing on the balcony by moonlight, and myself in the garden below looking up and worshipping.
“What a distracting Juliet she would have made!” I exclaimed aloud, carried away by my imagination. Then—I can't for the life of me tell why—but I remembered how she had looked a while ago with her hands clasped and her head thrown back, and how she had suddenly checked her passionate complaint to assume the rapt attitude, the pose of picturesque despair, and how very melodramatic the effect had been. If it had not been the purest nature, it would have been the most finished piece of acting that ever drew down the house to a Siddons or a Kemble. But it was pure nature. Then why do I start, and why does my heart begin to thump against my coat in this inexplicable way? Pshaw! Because I am a fool. I set spurs to my horse, and galloped home, whistling defiantly all the way.