Robert Elsmere
I said all that to you just now, may I be forgiven. One purpose, one
only, brought me from Norway, forbade me to go to Scotland, drew me to
Whinborough, guided me up your valley--the purpose of seeing your face!'
It could not be said at that precise moment that he had attained it.
Rather she seemed bent on hiding that face quite away from him. It
seemed to him an age before, drawn by the magnetism of his look, her
hands dropped, and she faced him, crimson, her breath fluttering a
little. Then she would have spoken, but he would not let her. Very
tenderly and quietly his hand possessed itself of hers as he knelt
beside her.
'I have been in exile for two months--you sent me. I saw that I troubled
you in London. You thought I was pursuing you--pressing you. Your manner
said "Go!" and I went. But do you think that for one day, or hour, or
moment I have thought of anything else in those Norway woods but of you
and of this blessed moment when I should be at your feet, as I am now?'
She trembled. Her hand seemed to leap in his. His gaze melted, enwrapped
her. He bent forward. In another moment her silence would have so
answered for her that his covetous arms would have stolen about her for
good and all. But suddenly a kind of shiver ran through her--a shiver
which was half memory, half shame. She drew back violently, covering her
eyes with her hand.
'Oh no, no!' she cried, and her other hand struggled to get free,
'don't, don't talk to me so--I have a--a--confession.'
He watched her, his lips trembling a little, a smile of the most
exquisite indulgence and understanding dawning in his eyes. Was she
going to confess to him what he knew so well already? If he could only
force her to say it on his breast.
But she held him at arm's length.
'You remember--you remember Mr. Langham?'
'Remember him!' echoed Mr. Flaxman fervently.
'That thought-reading night at Lady Charlotte's, on the way home, he
spoke to me. I said I loved him. I _did_ love him; I let him kiss me!'
Her flush had quite faded. He could hardly tell whether she was yielding
or defiant as the words burst from her.
An expression, half trouble, half compunction, came into his face.
'I knew,' he said very low; 'or rather, I guessed.' And for an instant
it occurred to him to unburden himself, to ask her pardon for that
espionage of his. But no, no; not till he had her safe. 'I guessed, I
mean, that there had been something grave between you. I saw you were
sad. I would have given the world to comfort you.'
Her lip quivered childishly.
'I said I loved him that night. The next morning he wrote to me that it
could never be.'
He looked at her a moment embarrassed. The conversation was not easy.
Then the smile broke once more.
'And you have forgotten him as he deserved. If I were not sure of that I
could wish him all the tortures of the _Inferno_! As it is, I cannot
think of him; I cannot let you think of him. Sweet, do you know that
ever since I first saw you the one thought of my days, the dream of my
nights, the purpose of my whole life, has been to win you? There was
another in the field; I knew it. I stood by and waited. He failed you--I
knew he must in some form or other. Then I was hasty, and you resented
it. Little tyrant, you made yourself a Rose with many thorns! But, tell
me, tell me, it is all over--your pain, my waiting. Make yourself sweet
to me! unfold to me at last?'
An instant she wavered. His bliss was almost in his grasp. Then she
sprang up, and Flaxman found himself standing by her, rebuffed and
surprised.
'No, no!' she cried, holding out her hands to him though all the time.
'Oh, it is too soon! I should despise myself, I do despise myself. It
tortures me that I can change and forget so easily; it ought to torture
you. Oh, don't ask me yet to--to----'
'To be my wife,' he said calmly, his cheek a little flushed, his eye
meeting hers with a passion in it that strove so hard for self-control
it was almost sternness.
'Not yet!' she pleaded, and then, after a moment's hesitation, she broke
into the most appealing smiles, though the tears were in her eyes,
hurrying out the broken, beseeching words. 'I want a friend so much--a
real friend. Since Catherine left I have had no one. I have been running
riot. Take me in hand. Write to me, scold me, advise me, I will be your
pupil, I will tell you everything. You seem to me so fearfully wise, so
much older. Oh, don't be vexed. And--and--in six months----'
She turned away, rosy as her name. He held her still, so rigidly, that
her hands were almost hurt. The shadow of the hat fell over her eyes;
the delicate outlines of the neck and shoulders in the pretty pale dress
were defined against the green hill background. He studied her
deliberately, a hundred different expressions sweeping across his face.
A debate of the most feverish interest was going on within him. Her
seriousness at the moment, the chances of the future, her character, his
own--all these knotty points entered into it, had to be weighed and
decided with lightning rapidity. But Hugh Flaxman was born under a lucky
star, and the natal charm held good.
At last he gave a long breath; he stooped and kissed her hands.
'So be it. For six months I will be your guardian, your friend, your
teasing implacable censor. At the end of that time I will be--well,
never mind what. I give you fair warning.'
He released her. Rose clasped her hands before her and stood drooping.
Now that she had gained her point, all her bright mocking independence
seemed to have vanished. She might have been in reality the tremulous
timid child she seemed. His spirits rose; he began to like the role she
had assigned to him. The touch of unexpectedness, in all she said and
did, acted with exhilarating force on his fastidious romantic sense.
'Now, then,' he said, picking up her gloves from the grass, 'you have
given me my rights; I will begin to exercise them at once. I must take
you home, the clouds are coming up again, and on the way will you
kindly give me a full, true, and minute account of these two months
during which you have been so dangerously left to your own devices?'
She hesitated, and began to speak with difficulty, her eyes on the
ground. But by the time they were in the main Shanmoor path again, and
she was not so weakly dependent on his physical aid, her spirits too
returned. Pacing along with her hands behind her, she began by degrees
to throw into her accounts of her various visits and performances plenty
of her natural malice.
And after a bit, as that strange storm of feeling which had assailed her
on the mountain-top abated something of its bewildering force, certain
old grievances began to raise very lively heads in her. The smart of
Lady Fauntleroy's ball was still there; she had not yet forgiven him all
those relations; and the teasing image of Lady Florence woke up in her.
'It seems to me,' he said at last dryly, as he opened a gate for her not
far from Burwood, 'that you have been making yourself agreeable to a
vast number of people. In my new capacity of censor I should like to
warn you that there is nothing so bad for the character as universal
popularity.'
'_I_ have not got a thousand and one important cousins!' she exclaimed,
her lip curling. 'If I want to please, I must take pains, else "nobody
minds me."'
He looked at her attentively, his handsome face aglow with animation.
'What can you mean by that?' he said slowly.
But she was quite silent, her head well in air.
'Cousins?' he repeated. 'Cousins? And clearly meant as a taunt at me!
Now when did you see my cousins? I grant that I possess a monstrous and
indefensible number. I have it. You think that at Lady Fauntleroy's ball
I devoted myself too much to my family, and too little to----'
'Not at all!' cried Rose hastily, adding, with charming incoherence,
while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in her restless fingers,
'_Some_ cousins of course are pretty.'
He paused an instant: then a light broke over his face, and his burst of
quiet laughter was infinitely pleasant to hear. Rose got redder and
redder. She realised dimly that she was hardly maintaining the spirit of
their contract, and that he was studying her with eyes inconveniently
bright and penetrating.
'Shall I quote to you,' he said, 'a sentence of Sterne's? If it violate
our contract I must plead extenuating circumstances. Sterne is
admonishing a young friend as to his manners in society: "You are in
love," he says. "_Tant mieux._ But do not imagine that the fact bestows
on you a licence to behave like a bear towards all the rest of the
world. _Affection may surely conduct thee through an avenue of women to
her who possesses thy heart without tearing the flounces of any of their
petticoats_"--not even those of little cousins of seventeen! I say
this, you will observe, in the capacity you have assigned me. In another
capacity I venture to think I could justify myself still better.'
'My guardian and director,' cried Rose, 'must not begin his functions by
misleading and sophistical quotations from the classics!'
He did not answer for a moment. They were at the gate of Burwood, under
a thick screen of wild cherry trees. The gate was half open, and his
hand was on it.
'And my pupil,' he said, bending to her, 'must not begin by challenging
the prisoner whose hands she has bound, or he will not answer for the
consequences!'
His words were threatening, but his voice, his fine expressive face,
were infinitely sweet. By a kind of fascination she never afterwards
understood, Rose for answer startled him and herself. She bent her head;
she laid her lips on the hand which held the gate, and then she was
through it in an instant. He followed her in vain. He never overtook her
till at the drawing-room door she paused with amazing dignity.
'Mamma,' she said, throwing it open, 'here is Mr. Flaxman. He is come
from Norway, and is on his way to Ullswater. I will go and speak to
Margaret about tea.'
CHAPTER XLVIII
After the little incident recorded at the end of the preceding chapter,
Hugh Flaxman may be forgiven if, as he walked home along the valley that
night towards the farmhouse where he had established himself, he
entertained a very comfortable scepticism as to the permanence of that
curious contract into which Rose had just forced him. However, he was
quite mistaken. Rose's maiden dignity avenged itself abundantly on Hugh
Flaxman for the injuries it had received at the hands of Langham. The
restraints, the anomalies, the hairsplittings of the situation delighted
her ingenuous youth. 'I am free--he is free. We will be friends for six
months. Possibly we may not suit one another at all. If we
do--_then_----'
In the thrill of that _then_ lay, of course, the whole attraction of the
position.
So that next morning Hugh Flaxman saw the comedy was to be scrupulously
kept up. It required a tolerably strong masculine certainty at the
bottom of him to enable him to resign himself once more to his part. But
he achieved it, and being himself a modern of the moderns, a lover of
half-shades and refinements of all sorts, he began very soon to enjoy
it, and to play it with an increasing cleverness and perfection.
How Rose got through Agnes's cross-questioning on the matter history
sayeth not. Of one thing, however, a conscientious historian may be
sure, namely, that Agnes succeeded in knowing as much as she wanted to
know. Mrs. Leyburn was a little puzzled by the erratic lines of Mr.
Flaxman's journeys. It was, as she said, curious that a man should start
on a tour through the Lakes from Long Whindale.
But she took everything naively as it came, and as she was told. Nothing
with her ever passed through any changing crucible of thought. It