When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

"There was none," Adrian struck in decisively. "But I understand your meaning exactly. Listen a minute to this. If I had thought what you think possible—well, I would have bitten my tongue off rather than speak. Why, think of it! To ask a girl like that to sacrifice herself to a cripple—a half-cripple, at least...."

"Without good grounds for supposing she was waiting to be asked," said the Earl; adding, to anticipate protest:—"Come now!—that's what we mean. Let's say so and have done with it," to which Adrian gave tacit assent. His lordship continued:—"I quite believe you; at least, I believe you would rather have held your tongue than bitten it off. I certainly should. But—pardon my saying so—I cannot understand ... I'm not finding fault or doubting you ... I cannot understand how you came to be so—so ... I won't say cocksure—let's call it sanguine. If there had been time I could have understood it. But I cannot see where the time came in."

Adrian fidgetted uneasily, and felt his cheeks flush. "I can answer for when it began, with me. I walked across that glade from Arthur's Bridge quite turned into somebody else, with Gwen stamped on my brain like a Queen's head on a shilling, and her voice in my ears as plain as the lark's overhead. But whether we started neck and neck, I know not. I do know this, though, that I shall never believe that if I had been first seen by her in my character as a corpse, either she or I would ever have been a penny the wiser."

"You are the wiser?—quite sure?" The Earl seemed to have his doubts.

"Quite sure. Do you recollect how 'the Duke grew suddenly brave and wise'? He was only the 'fine empty sheath of a man' before. But it's no use quoting Browning to you."

"Not the slightest. I suppose he was referring to a case of love at first sight—is that it?... It is a time-honoured phenomenon, only it hardly comes into practical politics, because young persons are so secretive about it. I can't recollect any lady but Rosalind who mentioned it at the time—or any gentleman but Romeo, for that matter. Gwen has certainly kept her own counsel for three weeks past."

"Dear Lord Ancester, you are laughing at me...."

"No—no! No, I wouldn't do that. Perhaps I was laughing a little at human nature. That's excusable. However, I understand that you are cocksure—or sanguine—about the similarity of Romeo's case. I won't press Gwen about Rosalind's. Of course, if she volunteers information, I shall have to dismiss the commiseration theory—you understand me?—and suppose that she is healthily in love. By healthily I mean selfishly. If no information is forthcoming, all I can say is—the doubt remains; the doubt whether she is not making herself the family scapegoat, carrying away the sins of the congregation into the wilderness."

"You know I think that all sheer nonsense, whatever Gwen thinks? She may think the sins of the congregation are as scarlet. To me they are white as wool."

"The whole question turns on what Gwen thinks. Believing, as I do, that my child may be sacrificing herself to expiate a sin of mine, I have no course but to do my best to prevent her, or, at least to postpone irrevocable action until it is certain that she is animated by no such motive. I might advocate that you and she should not meet, for—suppose we say—a twelvemonth, but that I have so often noticed that absence not only 'makes the heart grow fonder,' as the song says, but also makes it very turbulent and unruly. So I shall leave matters entirely alone—leave her to settle it with her mother.... Your sister knows of this, I suppose?"