Chapter XIV

“Love’s throne was not with these; but far above
All passionate wind of welcome or farewell
He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of,
Though Truth foreknow Love’s Heart, and Hope foretell,
And Fame be for Love’s Sake desirable,
And youth be dear, and Life be Sweet to Love.”

ROSSETTI.

“Your uncle is out,” said Mrs. Fordington. She was dressed in a long pink over-all, and was superintending the gardening. “He has gone to a clerical meeting, he will probably only get a cold lunch, and make himself ill with smoking. I am very busy indeed with some new chickens, would you like to come and see them? They have to be fed every two hours you know, and they are a particularly delicate sort, needing constant attention.”

“Where is Dora?” asked Daphne listlessly, as she followed her aunt towards the poultry yard.

“Oh, Dora? I really don’t quite know what to do with Dora this afternoon,” said her aunt poking a recalcitrant hen with the tip of her rake; “you see her father lets her do so few lessons, and Marie does most of my dressmaking, and can’t be always attending to her, I quite miss you. I have my Parish Magazines to deliver, and a Temperance League address to prepare. I suppose you could scarcely take her back to Lady Middleton’s, her father would call for her after tea?”

“Do let me,” said Daphne eagerly, “I am sure Vera wouldn’t mind. The little chickens are so pretty,” she added. She felt her eyes filling with foolish tears, as they rested on the little innocent balls of fluff, and their eager, agitated mother.

Spring seemed to teach her to yearn for love. Birds love that sings, flowers love that glows, earth’s love rich in increase, the sea’s love infinite in depth. Man’s love alone seemed out of place in the scheme of beauty, for where it most would soar, it falls most pitifully. So Daphne thought, knowing in her own heart that the battle she was fighting against her love would be sweetest to her in defeat.

“I am not sure,” said her aunt looking at them with a keen, experienced eye, “that they will turn out satisfactorily.” Daphne gave a little hysterical laugh. Her aunt glanced at her sharply. “You want some milk,” she said; “you have been walking too fast in the heat. It is a pity you are so impulsive, Daphne.”

An hour later Dora and Daphne set off, hand in hand, radiant with youth and happiness.

“I fink,” said Dora, “we _might_ find a waterfall, don’t you, Cousin Daphne?”

“What should we do with it if we found it, sweet?”

“Oh! we’d go there, often and often,” said Dora happily, “and there would be ferns, and we could take our shoes and stockings off, and it would make ever’n and ever’n so much more noise, than both the bath-room taps.”

“And a prince with ever such long, golden hair,” suggested Daphne, “would come out of the wood and take us in a little boat——”

“A _safe_ little boat?” interrupted Dora anxiously.

“Oh! ever such a safe boat,” laughed Daphne, “right down the stream, on and on through woods and dales, all down to the sea, and then we could paddle all day long, and he could find us shells——”

“And seaweed?” chanted Dora.

“Red seaweed!” exclaimed the triumphant Daphne.

A shadow came over Dora’s face. “If the prince wouldn’t mind _very_ much,” she said politely, “I fink I should like to find _some_ of the shells myself, Cousin Daphne.”

“You should find a great many _more_ than the prince could,” said Daphne with emphasis, “and all the seaweed.”

Dora’s eyes shone with delight. “And would there be room for father in the boat?” she cried.

“Yes,” said Daphne growing a little thoughtful, “there would be plenty of room for father.” At this moment they came out of the shadows of the trees and met face to face with a tall man whom Daphne seemed to know.

“Is this the prince?” whispered Dora pulling at her hand. “Oh! Cousin Daphne, how cold your hands are.”

Daphne drew the child closer to her side. “He has no golden hair,” she whispered. Then she looked up at him. “What do you want with me—Arthur?” she said. He looked at her with haggard eyes. All that day he had been fighting with his future and hers. He knew that the issue lay in his hands, and he had lived all his life among great issues, and so he was afraid.

It is only the ignorant and inexperienced who dare to throw down their challenge to fortune, and stake a smile against the world. They are audacious because they are blind, and assured because they do not know. Those who have lived longer, tremble more and dare less, and when they dare they achieve.

“I cannot tell what I mean to do,” said Arthur, “but I am very sure about what you are not to do. You are not to marry a man you do not love. I am not sentimental, I have always dealt with facts, and marriage where there is no love is an unpleasant fact. I cannot let you face this, Daphne. I suppose that in some mad moment of panic, after you left me last night, you gave an answer to the very man you refused to admit you meant to marry. I cannot believe that you meant to lie to me. Will you tell me why you did it?”

“You would not let me go,” said Daphne. Her breath came fast, and she could not meet his eyes. “So I took the one way out.” There seemed in the soft summer stillness, an almost audible clash of human wills, and human passions. The quiet wood, at full noon-day heat, and peace, became a battle-field, a place to fear, and to escape from. Dora began to cry.

“This is not the right place for a child,” said Arthur sternly. With a sudden movement he bent forward, and took the child up in his arms. He carried her, still crying with fright, further in among the trees, then he came back to Daphne.

“Now,” he said, “be honest! For once in our lives let us face truth and abide by it. Forget that you are a well-brought-up member, of the upper-middle-classes, and come back to your elemental womanhood. You have given me to understand that you love me. Love is not a gentle preference for a suitable person, it is a very real thing, and it is quite true I am an unsuitable person. The question is, have you really this love for me?” Daphne felt that terrible struggle to evade, which is at once the curse and the defence of Eve’s daughters.

“I care—for you, Arthur,” she said slowly.

“What do you mean by ‘_care_?’” he asked impatiently.

“I would have married you if—if it had been possible!” she pleaded.

“Who is to say it is impossible?” he asked her scornfully. “Protesting is not my forte, but you know that I have loved you against my wish, my will, against my reason, against everything that is transitory and easy to assume! I love you so that I cannot work, or think or live without you, as well as I could work, and think, and live for you! You rob me of the best that is in me, if you withhold what you have already pledged to me in words! And you? Is it for your advantage that you should marry a man you neither love nor really know? Will you go out into the dark, without even the safeguard of a true emotion? Whose ultimate good can you hope to gain by such an experiment, an experiment that you will not be able to escape from when it fails? Are you entirely blind to the probable consequences of such a step and its almost inevitable conclusion?”

Daphne shivered before the torrent of his words, and she was not quite satisfied with his protestation. She would so much rather have had him say, that he could not live without her at all, than that he could live better with her.

“Don’t you see,” she tried to explain, “that it is less wrong for me to suffer, even the failure of an experiment, than to succeed in a wrong experiment? It is because I should be so happy with you, because we should be deceiving the world, that I cannot do this! Can people be rightly happy whose whole life is based on a lie?”

“The foundation of our life would not be a lie,” he said. “The merest barrier of convention, a law of man which cannot reach our hearts, _this_ indeed we should ignore; but there is no deception in ignoring what does not concern us. Love and our work, and the life we can lead together, it is to this you must listen, and if you listen to this, the voice of your scruples will be dumb.”

Daphne fell back on her last line of defences; they were her defences, but they were not the truth; she was giving him every reason in the world—instead of the real one—and yet behind the feebleness of her weapons she knew her spirit was right, while behind the strongest of his passionate reasons she felt him to be in the wrong. “I have promised David,” she said.

“You promised me before you ever promised David!” he cried.

“Will you never stop loving me?” she asked, pleading for the reward of virtue, not the wages of sin. Arthur smiled.

“There are some things you will have to take for granted,” he said, “meanwhile I am quite able to look after my own interests and yours. I give you one week to think over what I have said to you, and to dismiss your rather weak excuse. You will grant he is rather weak?”

“I have granted so much!” said Daphne.

“That is it,” he said, “you have granted so much, that there is nothing left, but for you to grant it all. I am sorry you made this blunder, it will cause you pain. It has done so already I fear, and I want to save you from all the trouble I can.”

The keen look faded from his eyes, and they grew tender as he glanced at the slight figure of the girl—a smile began to quiver about his mouth—after all he was a little like other men, she thought.

But without another word he turned and left her. For a few moments Daphne stood quite still. She knew enough about men to understand, that there was one argument, generally very efficacious, that Arthur had never used with her. The nearest he had ever come to it was when he had taken her by the shoulders, and even then he had merely shaken her, as he would have done a perverse child, and let her go. She knew that he would not permit an emotional surrender, and that was the only one she felt as if she could have made. The colour came into her face, and frowning, she turned back into the trees to find Dora. She passed in among the trees until she saw the child’s figure; as she came towards her, a twig snapped, Dora turned with a terrible little cry, and fell forward on her face.