Chapter XXIV: "But I'm Afraid"

"DOES it matter so very much?" Maurice asked at length, a thrill of intense feeling in his voice.

"I'm afraid it does." Her eyes were full.

"It was wrong of me not to tell you sooner. You forgive?"

"Oh, it isn't—forgiveness," she said, with difficulty. "It means so many things."

"Tell me—what things."

She shook her head.

"I can't. How can I?"

"No need," he said.

Then he explained how fully he knew; how deeply he felt his own position; how in college days he had suffered—always in silence—from the impossibility of asking his college chums to his home, as other men did. How he had fought the battle out, had accepted those conditions of life which were his, had determined to make his own standing, had found friends, had hoped that the worst was over. And then—how he had seen her, and had discovered, with a new and terrible poignancy, what his position indeed meant.

Not at the beginning; not when they first met; but day by day as they grew more intimate. Then the old battle had to be fought over again; only far worse, far harder, than ever before. Even when he had seemed to be at his best and gayest, he never could forget, and the strife had gone on. For all through he had known that, sooner or later, he must tell her everything; and time after time he had striven to bring out the words, which he feared would dash his hopes to the ground.

"For I love you!—love you!" he said, with a concentration of passion. "I love you with all my heart—with all my soul. No one ever has been— no one ever can be—what you have become. Doris, do you care ever so little for me? Could you love me? Could you be mine—my own!—my very own?"

He caught her hands, and rained kisses upon them. She let them lie in his grasp, neither responding nor checking.

"Tell me—do you care? Sometimes I hope that you do. In spite of all this—do you love me, just a little? Am I nothing to you—nothing at all?"

"No!" she whispered. The monosyllable seemed to be dragged from her.

"You do—you do love! My own! My darling!"

The rapture of look and tone awoke a sense of prudence.

"Yes, but—no, stop, please. It can't be. It is impossible. It can never be."

"But if you love me, Doris, sweetest!—if you feel for me only one-hundredth part of what I feel for you—is this to keep us apart? This, that I cannot help—this, for which I am not responsible!—this, that does not change me, does not make me in myself unfit for you? Is the question of my forbears so tremendous a thing, that it must spoil my life—must spoil, perhaps, both our lives? If other things do not stand in the way, and if you know that I could make you happy—Doris, my darling, does it not seem that we are made for one another? I have felt it so from the first. Have not you? I love you—and you do not deny that you love me. Is not that enough, my darling—my own?"

He was beside her on the grass, his eyes on a level with hers, searching into them, full of pleading, full of vehement appeal; his face white with feeling.

"If we truly love, can anything keep us long apart? Shall any lesser thing be allowed? Would it be right—reasonable? I do not minimise the difficulty. It is real, I know. But think!—think!—dear one. Could you choose to live your life apart from mine?—would you choose it, if the choice is yours? Are we not one already in mind and heart? If you love—would you consent to separation for life, only for this?—only that yours is bluer blood than mine! You shall make of me what you will! My people shall not trouble you—that I can promise. It is you and I who love—just you and I! What has the rest of the world to do with us? Just you and I!—my Doris!—my darling!"

His passionate energy swept her along, carried her away, and she burst into tears.

"I don't know. Oh, I don't know," was all she could say; and his arms were round her.

"My own! My Doris!"

"Oh, don't! Please don't! It is so hard. I can't tell what mother will say. And—there is Mr. Stirling."

"He is only a friend. He has no real authority over me." Maurice laughed joyously, holding her fast. "My own! My own!" he repeated, with a radiance of delight which infected her and bore her, metaphorically, off her feet. It was like being carried along on a whirlwind. "I am of an age to decide for myself. And you—my darling—"

"If—mother—" she faltered. "But I'm afraid—I'm afraid—she won't—"

"Don't be afraid. Why should you? Now we know that we love, all else is nothing. We may face the world without a doubt."

This was all very well; but he did not know Mrs. Winton.

"Even if obstacles do arise, it will only be for a time. You are mine now—mine absolutely. While you and I are true one to another, nothing can finally separate us."

He had his way. He had won a confession of her love; and his ardour awoke a reflection in her. For the moment, doubts were mastered, and she consented to put them aside, to yield herself to him. Nothing—just then!—seemed of importance, beyond the fact that each loved the other.

Time fled on wings as they talked; and they had the place to themselves.

They compared notes as to the beginnings of love on either side. Maurice told her what lovely eyes she had, and how she had taken him captive with her first glance, her first smile. Doris more cautiously admitted that he from the first had seemed unlike other men. They laughed over some recollections; and they lived through once more the crucial hour of her difficult rock-climb.

Then they reverted to his early life; and he told her many things connected with his past,—how seldom he had been allowed to see his own people; how his holidays had been spent with comparative strangers, or else at school. Doris said how she had taken to the gentle Winnie; and he replied earnestly that she should see Winnie as often as she chose,—but not Jane! She was silent, knowing that he could not, even for her sake, repudiate the relationship. And there was his mother too. A chill crept through her at the thought that she, some day, would be Mrs. Morris' daughter-in-law,—and Jane's sister-in-law! And what—oh, what—would her mother say? It was Mrs. Winton—not the Rector— whom she feared; and still more, opposition in herself.

She began to wonder how she could have so completely, given in to his urgency. At the first she had felt everything to be changed by this discovery; she had looked upon him as impossible. And now — here was she already engaged to marry him! Subject, no doubt, to her parents' consent; yet provisionally engaged.

Had she been too impulsive, too easily carried away? Would it not have been wiser, more sensible, at least to have insisted on time for consideration?

These doubts suggested themselves; and then again she met his ardent gaze, his glowing smile; and she could think of nothing else. He stole another kiss; and while she protested, she did feel that it was very sweet to be so loved.

"I don't understand about your name," she said later, having for a while lost sight of these questionings. "Why is it different from your mother's?"

"Mine is, I believe, the right spelling. Mr. Stirling settled the question for me in boyhood, and gave no reason. Sometimes I have fancied that my father may have wished to disguise his name, when he went to Canada. But I know so little—beyond that one fact that he was by birth and education a gentleman. My mother only spoke of it once; but she was quite definite."

Doris could not resist saying—

"But I saw his likeness."

"We have no likeness of him."

"Yes; it was on the table, at the farm. Mrs. Brutt took it up, and his name was written—'Phil Morris.'"

"My mother has never shown it to me."

"It was there," repeated Doris, reading unbelief in the tone. "And— Dick—it was not the face of a gentleman."

He smiled. "Rather difficult to judge from a photograph."

"It was painted."

"Still less to go upon, unless the artist were first-rate. Would you like to be labelled from all your likenesses?"

She was silent; not convinced.

"And after all, my darling,—don't you think that the real question is— not, what my father was, but what I am? I don't mean that that is without weight; but surely—it has lesser weight."

"You don't know my mother, Dick, or how much she thinks of that sort of thing."

"She is—a little particular!"—fondly.

"Oh, very!—very!"

Doris heard her own voice speaking to the Squire, as she stood with head thrown back,—"I'm not the very least afraid of being taken for one of Jane Morris's friends!" She added faintly—

"I'm afraid—I'm a little particular too."

He looked at her with admiration, ready to believe that she was so in the abstract, and failing to see the present application.

"You shall be as particular as you like with me, my darling. Whatever you wish shall be done."

She sighed, but did not explain; and again he poured out loving words, till he had once more the upper hand, and her doubts waned before his fervour. After a while she reverted to them sufficiently to observe—

"I wonder why Mr. Stirling has never spoken of you to us—or of your mother. We know him so well."

"He would hardly go about talking of his own generosity. I don't think that would be his way. Besides—" Maurice stopped.

"Yes. Besides—?"

"I have never felt that I could fathom him. His is a perplexing character—a curious mixture of opposites. My sister, Winnie, half worships him. But, with all his kindness to us, he has somehow never managed to win my affection."

"You don't care for him!"—wonderingly.

"No."

"But—why?"

He laughed, and quoted,—"'The reason why I cannot tell—but this I do know very well—'"

"We all think so much of him. Why, Dick,—he always seems to me just perfect. I've never known him do a wrong thing."

"He has been a most generous friend to us. Won't that do?"

They walked back slowly, neither of them in haste to end the day. Recurring waves of doubt assailed Doris from time to time; but she put aside each in turn. The future would have to be met. The present she would make the most of. Still, she could not feel quite easy.

When they reached the last piece of steep downhill, leading to the village, they found that they would be late for table d'hôte, and also that they were in for a grand "after-glow."

Not upon snow, but upon rocks, the nearer heights being at this time of the year almost free from snow. All the vast rocky barrier, extending from the Diablerets to the Dent du Morcles, was transformed as by the touch of a magician's wand from its ordinary cold grey to an extraordinary radiance, like molten copper shining with its own intensity of heat. Between the red-gold of the Diablerets and the rich orange of the Argentiere many varieties of tints might be seen; but all were brilliant, burnished, metallic, wonderful! It was hard to believe that the gorgeous wealth of colouring was a loan, not intrinsic. The splendour lasted long, and faded gradually.

Neither spoke. They stood and gazed.

Doris saw vividly how, but a short time back, she had been at the parting of two ways. A single step—and she hung in the very arms of death—she was actually falling over an awful abyss. One instant of hesitation on the part of Maurice must have sealed her fate; and she would now be in that other world, beyond the veil which shrouds our senses; a world as real, as actual, as this; a world prefigured to the imagination by such a scene as that on which she was looking.

A vision came of what that fall would have meant,—the fearful downward rush through yielding air; the clear consciousness of time; the lightning realisation of past and present, of squandered hours and wasted opportunities; the shock of terrific contact with mother-earth; and then—the entrance on that other world.

But she had not gone. She was still on this side of the dividing veil. She had still to live this lower life of preparation, with its duties, its overvalued littlenesses, its undervalued greatnesses. And she was glad to be here; glad to be not yet called away; glad to feel that it was still in her power to make a better and nobler thing of her life than in the past.

She glanced towards Maurice, and found his eyes bent steadily—not on the glowing rock-mountains, but upon herself.

"Dick—I needn't tell Mrs. Brutt?"

"I don't think it is her business."

"But—my people must know."

"Yes. The question is—shall I write to your father at once? Or, shall I wait till I go home next week, and travel straight to Lynnbrooke?"

"Will you do that? Oh, Dick, it will be best—much, much best. If they see you, that will make just all the difference."

"I'm not so sure! But it does seem the wiser plan. One can say so much more—verbally."

"Only of course we can't count it really an engagement, till they know."

"I'm afraid I count it very real indeed."

"You don't know what mother will think."

Her face shadowed over, and a chill query shot through his mind. Had he brought trouble upon her by his impulsive action? He was not in the main a selfish man; far from it; but this day he had been completely carried away by passion.

In the morning he had intended to let her know about his parentage; but since she had never named the Morrises, he had no idea that she had ever come across them. He felt only that she had a right to know all; and he meant to enlighten her.

Now he had gone far beyond mere enlightenment. He had taken irrevocable steps. Whether their engagement should or should not be permitted to stand, he had called into active life longings, hitherto vague, now definite, which would not be easily laid to rest.

Was she to pay a penalty of suffering for his failure in self-control?