‘May God punish me if I do not make you happy,’ said Gilbert, his eyes set upon her. ‘A woman is beyond my understanding. How can you risk so much for a man like me? How can you know that you are not spoiling your life?’
‘I think I have always known,’ said she.
He stood, neither speaking nor approaching her. The miracle of her love was too great for him to grasp. In spite of the gallant personality he carried through life, in spite of the glory of his youth and strength, he was humble-hearted, and, before this woman, he felt himself less than the dust. In the old life in Spain which had slipped from him he had been the prominent figure of the circle in which he lived. His men friends had admired and envied him, and, to the younger ones, Gilbert Speid, who kept so much to himself, who looked so quiet and could do so many things better than they, was a model which they were inclined to copy. To women, the paradox of his personal attraction and irregular face, and the fact that he only occasionally cared to profit by his own advantages, made him consistently interesting. He had left all that and come to a world which took little heed of him, to find in it this peerless thing of snow and flame, of truth and full womanhood, and she was giving her life and herself into his hand. He was shaken through and through by the charm of her eyes, her hands, her hair, her slim whiteness, the movements of her figure, the detachment which made approach so intoxicating. He could have knelt down on the river-bank.
The sun had gone from the sky when the two parted and Cecilia went up through the trees to Morphie. He left her at the edge of the woods, standing to watch her out of sight. Above his head the heavens were transfigured by the evening, and two golden wings were spread like a fan across the west. The heart in his breast was transfigured too. As he neared Whanland and looked at the white walls of the palace that was to contain his queen, the significance of what had happened struck him afresh. She would be there, in these rooms, going in and out of these doors; her voice and her step would be on the stair, in the hall. He entered in and sat down, his elbows on the table, his face hidden in his hands, and the tears came into his eyes.
When the lights were lit, and Macquean’s interminable comings-in and goings-out on various pretexts were over, he gave himself up to his dreams of the coming time. In his mind he turned the house upside down. She liked windows that looked westward; he would go out of his own room, which faced that point, and make it into a boudoir for her. She liked jessamine, and jessamine should clothe every gate and wall. She had once admired some French tapestry, and he would ruin himself in tapestry. She should have everything that her heart or taste could desire.
He would buy her a horse the like of which had never been seen in the country, and he would go to England to choose him; to London, to the large provincial sales and fairs, until he should come upon the animal he had in his mind. He must have a mouth like velvet, matchless manners and paces, the temper of an angel, perfect beauty. He thought of a liver-chestnut, mottled on the flank, with burnished gold hidden in the shades of his coat. But that would not do. Chestnuts, children of the sun, were hot, and he shivered at the bare idea of risking her precious body on the back of some creature all nerves and sudden terrors and caprices. He would not have a chestnut. He lost himself in contemplation of a review of imaginary horses.
She must have jewels, too. He had passed them over in his dreams, and he remembered, with vivid pleasure, that he need not wait to gratify his eyes with the sight of something fit to offer her. In a room near the cellar was a strong box which Barclay had delivered to him on his arrival, and which had lain at Mr. Speid’s bankers all the years of his life in Spain. He had never opened it, although he kept the key in the desk at his elbow, but he knew that it contained jewels which had belonged to his mother. He sprang up and rang for a light; then, with the key in his hand, he went down to the basement, carried up the box, and set it on the table before him.
He found that it was made in two divisions, the upper being a shelf in which all kinds of small things and a few rings were lying; the lower part was full of cases, some wooden and some made of faded leather. He opened the largest and discovered a necklace, each link of which was a pink topaz set in diamonds. The stones were clear set, for the artificer had not foiled them at the back, as so many of his trade were apt to do, and the light flowed through them like sunlight through roses. Gilbert was pleased, and laid it again in its leather case feeling that this, his first discovery, was fit even for Cecilia.
The next thing that he opened was a polished oval wooden box, tied round and round with a piece of embroidery silk, and having a painted wreath of laurel-leaves encircling the ‘C. L.’ on the top of the lid. It was a pretty, dainty little object, pre-eminently a woman’s intimate property; a little thing which might lie on a dressing-table among laces and fans, or be found tossed into the recesses of some frivolous, scented cushion close to its owner. It did not look as though made to hold jewels. Inside lay the finest and thinnest of gold chains, long enough to go round a slender throat, and made with no clasp nor fastening. It was evidently intended to be crossed over and knotted in front, with the ends left hanging down, for each terminated in a pear-shaped stone—one an emerald set in diamonds, and one a diamond set in emeralds. The exquisite thing charmed him, and he sat looking at it, and turning it this way and that to catch the light. He loved emeralds, because they reminded him of the little brooch he had often seen on Cecilia’s bosom. It should be his first gift to her.
He next came upon the shagreen case containing the pearl necklace which Mr. Speid had carried with him when he went to fetch his bride, and which had adorned his mother’s neck as she drove up in the family chariot to Whanland. He did not know its history, but he admired the pearls and their perfect uniformity and shape, and he pictured Cecilia wearing them. He would have her painted in them.