CHAPTER XII.
“ONE BORN TO LOVE YOU, SWEET.”
“And Mr. Sefton,” asked Vansittart, “what has he to do with this?”
“He was with my brother at Cambridge—in the same year, at the same college, Trinity. It was not till the year before last that he ever spoke to me about Harold, or that I knew they had been friends. But one summer afternoon when he called and happened to find me in the garden, alone—a thing that seldom happens in our family—he began to talk to me, very kindly, with a great deal of good feeling, about Harold. He said he had been slow to speak about him, as he knew that he must be in some measure under a cloud. And then I told him how unhappy I was about my poor brother; and how it was four or five years since anything had been heard of him directly or indirectly. His last letter had told us that he was going to join a party of young men who were just setting out upon an exploring tour in the Mashona country. They were willing to take him with them on very easy terms, as he was a fine shot, and strong and active. He would be little better than a servant in the expedition, he told me.”
“It was to you he wrote, then?”
“Yes, after my mother’s death, only to me. He never wrote to his father. I told Mr. Sefton how unhappy I was about Harold, and my fear—a growing fear—that he must be dead. He argued me out of this terror, and told me that when a man who was leading a wild life far away from home once let a long time slip without writing to his relations, the probabilities were that he would leave off writing altogether. His experience had shown him that this was almost a certainty. And then, seeing how distressed I was, he promised that he would try and find out Harold’s whereabouts. He told me that the newspaper press and the electric cable had made the world a very small world, and that he certainly ought to be able to trace my brother’s wanderings, and bring me some information about him.”
“And did he succeed?”
“No; he failed always in getting any certain knowledge of Harold’s wanderings, though he did bring me some scraps of information about his adventures in Mashonaland; but that was all news of past years—ever so long ago. He could hear nothing aboutHarold in the present—not within the last four years—so there was very little comfort in his discoveries. Last November he told me that he had heard of a man at the diamond fields whose description seemed exactly to fit my brother, and he thought this time he was on the right track. He wrote to an agent at Cape Town, and took every means of putting himself in communication with this man—both through the agent and by advertisements in the local papers—and the result was disappointment. There was no Harold Marchant among the diamond-seekers. That was what he had to tell me the afternoon you overheard our conversation. He had received the final letter which assured him he had been mistaken.”
“And that was all—and verily all?” inquired Vansittart, taking her hand in his.
“That was all, and verily all.”
“And beyond that association, Mr. Sefton is nothing in the world to you?”
“Nothing in the world.”
“And if there were some one else, quite as willing as Mr. Sefton, to hunt for this wandering brother of yours, some one else who loves you fondly”—his arm was round her now, and he was drawing her towards him, drawing the blushing cheek against his own, drawing the slender form so near that he could hear the beating of her heart—“some one else who longs to have you for his wife, would you listen to him, Eve? And if that some one else were I, would you say ‘Yes’?”
She turned to answer him, but her lips trembled and were mute. There was no need of speech between lovers whose very life breathed love. His lips met hers, and took his answer there.
“Dearest, dearest, dearest,” he sighed, when that long kiss had sealed the bond; and then they sat in silence, hand clasped in hand, in the face of the Sussex Weald, and the far-reaching Sussex Downs, and the silvery shimmer of the distant sea.
Oh, Easter Day of deep content! Would either of these two souls ever know such perfect bliss again—the bliss of loving and being loved, while love was still a new thing?
A shrill long cooey broke the silent spell, and they both started up as if awakened out of deepest slumber.
“They are looking for us,” cried Eve, as she walked swiftly towards the other side of the ridge.
Tivett and the four girls came toiling towards her.
“Mr. Tivett has taken us a most awful round,” cried Hetty. “He pretended to know the way, and he doesn’t know it one little bit.”
“My dear young lady,” apologized the gentle Tivett, “the truth of the matter is that I trusted to my natural genius for topography, for I have never been on Bexley Hill before.”
“And you pretended to pilot us, and have only led us astray.”
“Alas! sweet child, the world is full of such pilots.”
“Shall I tell them?” whispered Vansittart, at Eve’s ear.
“If you like. They will make a dreadful fuss. Can you ever put up with so many sisters-in-law?”
“I would put up with them if you had as many sisters as Hypermnestra;” and then, laughing happily, he told these four girls that they were soon to have a sister less and a brother more.
Hetty and Peggy received the news with whooping and clapping of hands, Sophy and Jenny with polite surprise. Was there ever anything so wonderful? Nothing could have been further from their thoughts. Little Mr. Tivett skipped and frisked like a young lamb in a meadow. Had Eve Marchant been his sister he could hardly have shown more delight.
The descent of the hill for Eve and Vansittart was a progress through pure ether. They knew not that their feet touched the earth. They were like the greater gods and goddesses in the Homeric Olympus. They started and they arrived. The labour of common mortals was not for them.
“Do you remember the legend of the blue flower of happiness which grows upon the mountain peak, and is said to fade and wither in the lower air?” asked Vansittart, close at his fiancée’s ear. “We have found the blue flower on the hilltop, Eve. God grant that for us the heaven-born blossom will keep its bloom even on the dull level of daily life.”
“Will our life be dull?” she questioned, in her shy sweet voice, as if she scarcely dared speak of her love louder than in a whisper. “I don’t think I can ever find life dull so long as you really care for me.”
“No, Eve, life shall not be dull. It shall be as bright and varied, and as full of change and gladness, as devoted love can make it. Your youth has not been free from care, dearest; and you have missed many of the pleasures which girls of your age demand as a right. But the arrears shall be made up. There shall be full measure of gladness in your married life, if I can make you glad. I am not what the modern world calls a rich man; but I am very far from poverty. I have enough for all the real pleasures of life—for travel, and books, and music, and the drama, and gracious surroundings, and kindly charities. The sting of narrow means can never touch my wife.”
“It can be a very sharp sting sometimes,” said Eve; and then, dropping again into that shy undertone, “But if you were ever so poor, and if you were a working man, and we had to live in that cottage under the beech tree, squatters, with only a key-holding, I think I could be perfectly happy.”
“Ah, that is what love always thinks, while the blue flower blooms; but when that mystic flower begins to fade there is some virtue in pleasant surroundings. Years hence, when you begin to be tired of me, and the blue flower takes a greyish shade, why, we can change the scene of our lives, wander far away, and in a new world I shall seem almost a new lover.”
“Will you ever take me to Italy?” she asked. “Italy has been the dream of my life, but I never thought it would be realized.”
“Ah, that is just a girl’s fancy, fed by old-fashioned poets—Byron, for instance. The Italy of to-day is very disappointing, and just like everywhere else.”
“Oh, Mr. Vansittart!”
“Mr.!” he echoed. “Henceforward I am John, or Jack; very soon, my husband. Never again Mr., except in your letters to tradespeople or your orders to servants.”
“Am I really to call you Jack?”
“Really. It is the name by which I best know myself. But if you think it is too vulgar——”
“Vulgar; it is a lovely name. Jack! Jack!”
She repeated the monosyllable as if it were a sound of exquisite music, a sound on which to dwell lingeringly and lovingly for its very sweetness. To Vansittart also the name was sweet, spoken by those lips.
Colonel Marchant received Mr. Vansittart’s offer for his eldest daughter politely, but with no excess of cordiality. He had set his hope upon a richer marriage, had encouraged Sefton’s visit to the Homestead, with the idea that he would eventually propose to Eve. He might not mean matrimony in the first instance, perhaps, though he obviously admired the young lady, but he would be led on and caught before he was aware. Colonel Marchant had implicit faith in his daughter’s power to ward off any evil purpose of her admirer; and although he knew Sefton’s character well enough to know that he would not willingly marry a penniless girl, he trusted to the power of Eve’s beauty and personal charm to bring him to the right frame of mind.
He was too shrewd a campaigner, however, to refuse the humble sparrow in the hand for the goldfinch in the bush. Sefton had been dangling about the family for nearly two years, and had scrupulously abstained from any serious declaration; and here was a young man of good birth and breeding, with a very fair estate, who between January and April had made up his mind in the manliest fashion, and was willing to take Eve for his wife without a sixpence, and to settle three hundred a year upon her for pin-money. Vansittart had offered himself in a frank and business-like manner, had declaredthe amount of his income, and his anxiety to marry as soon as possible.
“We have nothing in this world to wait for,” he said.
“Except a young lady’s caprice,” answered the Colonel. “Eve will be too happy in the pleasures of courtship to be anxious for the final step. And then there will be her trousseau to prepare. That will take time.”
“My mother can help her in all those details,” said Vansittart, thinking that in all probability his mother would have to pay for as well as to choose the wedding finery. “We can take all that trouble off your hands, Colonel Marchant.”
He wrote to his mother on Sunday night, when his sister’s household and guests were hushed in their first sleep; wrote at fullest length, dwelling fondly upon the graces and perfections of her whom he had chosen.
“She will love you dearly, if you will let her,” he wrote; “she will be to you as a second daughter—nearer to you, perhaps, than Maud can now be; for, if you will have it so, our lives may be spent mostly together, in a triple bond of love. I know not what your inclination may be, but for my own part I see no reason why we should not live as one household. Merewood is large enough for a much larger family than ours could be for years to come. Eve has been so long motherless that she would the more gladly welcome motherly love and solicitude. Think of it all, mother, and act in all things as may be most congenial to yourself. I would ask no sacrifices, but I do ask you to love my wife.”
This letter written, he could lay himself down to rest with an unburdened spirit, could fearlessly enter dreamland, knowing that his love would be with him in the land of shadows.
Strange, cruel irony, that the scene of his dreams should be Venice, where he and Eve were wandering confusedly, now on land, now on sea, greatly troubled by petty disturbances, and continually losing each other in labyrinthine streets and on slippery sea-washed stairs. Stranger still that Venice should be unlike Venice, and indeed unlike any place he had ever seen in his life.
The dream was but a natural sequence of Eve’s talk about Italy. It had hurt him that one of her first utterances after their betrothal should express her desire to visit a land whose frontier he would never willingly cross again. He had loved Italy with all his heart; but now the image of Venice burnt and festered in his mind like a plague-spot on the breast of a man in full health. All except that one accursed memory was peace.