"The next temptation comes from a certain young man. He besieges me—he swears he cannot live without me. He wants me to be engaged secretly—he says that I have promised. But I have not. As for keeping any secrets from you, and especially a matter of this importance, it is ridiculous. The young man is, in fact, one of the cousins—Sir Humphrey."
At this point Hilarie started, laid down the letter, looked up; read the words again; went on, with a red spot in either cheek.
"I confess humbly that the position which he offers attracts me. That so humble a person as myself should be elevated without any warning, so to speak, to this position—his mother is a great leader in the philanthropic part of society—is a curious freak of fortune. It is like a story-book. As for the man—well, for my own feeling about him, it is certainly quite true that I could very well live without him. I certainly should not droop and languish if he were to go somewhere else; yet—you know him, Hilarie. He is clever in a way. He thinks he has ideas about Art—he paints smudges, puts together chords, and writes lines that rhyme. He also plays disjointed bits, and complains that they do not appeal to me. That is harmless, however. His manners are distinguished, I suppose. He is quite contemptuous of everybody who has work to do. If you talk to him about the world below, it is like running your head against a stone wall. He loves me, he says, for the opposites. And what that means, I don't know. I suppose that, as a gentleman, he could be trusted to behave with decency and kindness to his wife. At the same time, I have found him, more than once, of a surprising ill temper, moody, jealous, violent, and I think that he is selfish in the cultivated manner—that is to say, selfish with refinement.
"I cannot and will not be guilty of a secret engagement; while a secret marriage, which he also vehemently urges, unknown to his mother or my friends, and to be kept in retirement, concealed from everybody, is a degradation to which I would never submit. I cannot understand what my lover means by such a proposal, nor why he cannot see that the thing is an insult and an impossibility.
"However, I have refused concealment. Meantime a most romantic and wonderful discovery is going to be disclosed. I must not set it down on paper, even for your eyes, Hilarie. It is a discovery of which Humphrey knows nothing as yet. He will learn it, I believe, in a few days. When he does learn it, it will necessitate a complete change in all his views of life; it will open the world for him; it will take him out of his narrow grooves; it will try him and prove him. Now, dear Hilarie, am I right to wait—without his knowing why? If he receives this discovery as he ought—if it brings out in him what is really noble in his character, I can trust myself to him. At the same time, it will deprive him of what first attracted me in him; but I must not tell you more.
"Lastly, my dear old Dick has been making love to me, just as he did when I was fifteen and he was seventeen, going about with my father, practising and playing. Such a Conservative—so full of prejudices is Dick. I confess to you, dear Hilarie, I would rather marry Dick than anything else. We should never have any money—Dick gives away all he gets. He will not put by. 'If I am ill,' he says, 'take me to the hospital.' 'If I die,' he says, 'bury me in the hedge, like the gipsy folk.' He never wants money, and I should sometimes go on tramp with him, and we should sit in the woods, and march along the roads, and hear the skylark sing, and yearn for the unattainable, and go on crying for we know not what, like the little children. Oh, delightful! And Dick is always sweet and always good—except, perhaps, when he speaks of Humphrey, who has angered him by cold and superior airs. Dick is a philosopher, except on that one side. When I think of marrying Dick, dear Hilarie, my heart stands still. For then I get a most lovely dream. I close my eyes to see it better. It is a most charming vision. There is a long road with a broad strip of turf on either side, and a high hedge for shade and flowers, goodly trees at intervals; a road which runs over the hills and down the valleys and along brooks; crosses bridges, and has short cuts through fields and meadows; overhead the lark sings; from the trees the yellow-hammer cries, 'A little bit of bread and no cheese;' clouds fly across the sky; all kinds of queer people pass along—vagrants, beggars, gipsies, soldiers,—just the common sort. On the springy turf at the side I myself walk, carrying the fiddle—in the middle of the road Dick tramps, going large and free; over his shoulders hangs the bag which contains all we want; now and then he bursts out singing as he goes. In the coppice we sit down on the trunk of a tree and take lunch out of a paper bag. Sometimes, when we are quite alone in a coppice, far away from the world, Dick takes his fiddle out of the case and plays to me, all alone, music that lifts me out of myself and carries me away, I know not whither. Who would not marry a great magician? And in my dream about Dick I am never tired. I never regret my lot—I never want money. Dick is never savage, like Humphrey—he despises no one; he is loved by everybody. Oh, Hilarie, I would ask for nothing—nothing better than to give myself to Dick, and to follow him and be his slave—his grateful slave! Is this love, Hilarie? Write to me, dear Hilarie, and tell me what I ought to do."
Hilarie laid down the letter with a sigh. "Strange," she said. "Molly sees her own path of happiness quite plainly; yet she cannot follow it. What she does not know is that she has shattered my own dream."
She opened another letter in her hand. "I should have known," she said. "He is base metal, through and through. I should have known. Yet what a son—of what a mother! Who would suspect?" She read the letter again.
"It has been my dream ever since the fortunate day when I met you in the churchyard, to unite our branches of the house. You have thought me cold about your very beautiful projects and illusions. I am, perhaps, harder than yourself, because I know the world better, and because I have always found people extremely amiable while you are giving them things—and exactly the reverse when you call upon them to give to others. However, you will never find me opposing the plans suggested by your nobility of character. I have spoken to my mother upon this subject——" She stopped short—she tore the letter in halves, then, with another thought, put back the torn sheet into its envelope. "Wretch!" she cried, "I will keep your letter!"
She sat there, alone, looking out upon the porch. The sun went down and the twilight descended, and she sat among the graves, thinking.