Upon the day designed by highest Heaven—as we are led to suppose—they took the way of Misperton Park, the enamoured gentleman and the lady. They sat under the famous Royal Oak—a shade with which she was, we know, familiar—Cratylus talked, Marina sat modestly listening. If he saw her the spirit of the tree—the peering Dryad Mero caught and held to his words, it’s all one. Her simple allure, her dainty reserves had ravished his senses; the tinge of sunburn in her cheeks, the glint of conscious pride in her eyes, beat back like blown flame upon his blood. That fired his brain. In a word, he loved, therefore he believed. He spoke of himself to-day, of his youth and marriage. Lady Diana was not named, but her knife under the cloak was implied. Sadly, yet without complaint, he related the ossifying of all his generous hopes. “This,” he said, “was long ago, but the dead cannot all at once be hidden under the turf. I have been ten years long at a burying, and now have done. What remain to me of years, I know not truly; but they will be the more precious if they are to be few. I believe that I am very capable of happiness—perhaps even of bestowing it. My affairs are in good order; I have been fortunate, as you know, in worldly respects. A childless widower, I pick up my life again at fifty where I left it at five-and-twenty. And I tell myself—I have told myself but newly—that I may not be too late.”
To this sort of soliloquy, to the grave voice that rehearsed it, she had nothing to say. He found that he must import her bodily into his conversation.
“For one thing,” he continued, after a pause of exploration, “I now have leisure, as you have seen, to interest myself in my neighbours, and have derived so much pleasure from it that I am deeply grateful to those who have indulged me. You are one. I think that you must have remarked what happiness your society and your confidence have been to me.” Her shamefastness, which tied her tongue, compelled him to probe. “Have you not seen that?”
She murmured that he had been very kind, that she was grateful. “Not so, my dear,” said he, “but the persons must be transposed. The kindness is yours, the obligation upon me. Come! Can you not tell me that you have understood me? Can you not let me be satisfied that you realize your own benevolence? If you cannot, I must withhold what I was about to say to you. I should want for courage. I must ask for your assurance. You will not refuse it?”
Exciting, mystifying talk! She dared not look up—but she asked him, What it was that she was to tell him?
He luxuriated in her bashfulness. “Why, my dearest child,” he said, very near to her, “I want to know whether you believe me happy in your company?”
She would not look at him, but she said “I hope that you like me—I do hope that.”
Then he took her hand and held it in both of his own. He gazed tenderly down upon her hanging head—not one meek beauty of her escaped him, neither of burning cheek, curved lashes, of heavy eyelids, rising breast. “Then, dear child, I will tell you plainly that I love you most sincerely; that you have my heart, such as it is, in your little hands—just as certainly as one of those hands is here in mine. I have told you the truth about myself—what I hoped to be, what I was, what I am become. And now, if you can repay that confidence with a confidence, I shall be satisfied indeed. But I must ask you again, Can you value the love of a man twice your age? Remember, I shall not be hurt if you tell me that you cannot. I shall respect your confidence, whatever it may be; and shall never trouble you again. . . . What do you tell me now, Mary?”
She had started visibly at the word “love,” and had been revealed to him for a flash, which gave him the value of her wide eyes, and of the flying colour, which now left her very pale, then lapped her in flame again, and showed her like a red rose. A flash only; for immediately after she had bowed her head so deeply that her chin nearly touched her bosom, and she could have smelt the knot of carnations fastened there. Her hand was still his prisoner but she would have freed it if she could; for now she was startled indeed. Though she had been forewarned, her armour was not on. This word was a dart, and stabbed her deep. The incredible thing had come to pass.
She had been prepared for unbounded sentiment, for tenderness, for the captured hand; she had foreseen a breathless moment or so, a stoop, and a kiss. Such a string of episodes—just that string of them—would not have been strange to her by any means, and would have satisfied her anticipations perfectly. She would have been elated, would have made much of it in her mind, might possibly, after some interval, in some tender hour, have confided it to a bosom friend. On many dull days it would have shone like a lamp, assuring her of substantial things, of honour done, of a positive achievement of hers—to have won such condescension from a great gentleman. Here had been—you may say—a creditable triumph for the Middlehams. But a declaration in so many words—love offered and asked again; what could this mean but one astounding thing? She was frightened, and that’s a fact; frightened out of her wits. The averting of her head, which so enchanted Mr. Germain, was of a piece with ostrich strategy. If she could have run and hidden underground she would have done it. For what can that word love from such a man mean but marriage? I beg the lady’s pardon for leaving her hand in so embarrassing a case, her head so downcast, her breath so troublesome—but her difficulties must be faced.
Marriage, as she had been taught this world’s economy, is the be-all and end-all for women here. It is almost a disgrace, and quite a disaster for a girl to slip into womanhood and not be wedded. The enormous seriousness, then, of the affair! All men talk to women of love, and a girl had need be quick to discern which kind is the staple, which kind is aimed at lip-service, which at life-service. There will be both to reckon with; the two rarely coincide. Many a young man will seek the flower of a girl’s lips, sup of it at ease, and content himself—ah, and content her, too; whereas your serious wooer, with his eye upon comfort, a foothold, a mother for his children and a stay for himself, may well have other things to think of—a promotion, a partnership, a chance abroad, a legacy, a desirable corner house. Care will tighten his lips too hard for kissing. The future will be all that he reads after in your eyes. If he kisses, it will be by custom as likely as not; don’t I say that he will have other things to think of? Now, Mr. Germain had not kissed Mary, though, to be sure, he had spoken of his love. And yet—and yet—yes, he wanted to marry her. Frightened? Yes, she was frightened; but she was full of thought, too.
She knew very well that her ways were not those of the world above her, the world of the upper air, where Honourable Mrs. Germains, Cantacutes, Duplessis, and the like talked familiarly together of parties and public affairs. There, as she saw the heights the women were so obviously desirable that there was nothing for them to do but pick up their happiness as they chose, and as their due. There could surely be no anxiety there, no whispered debates over what............