Stella Fregelius by H. Rider Haggard (books to read now TXT) 📖

fills up the whole place. Morris will look after Mary for half an hour, I daresay.”

“Certainly,” said Morris, but the heart within him sank to the level of his dress-shoes. Here was the opportunity for which he had wished, but as he could not be called a forward, or even a pushing lover, he was alarmed at its very prompt arrival. This answer to his prayers was somewhat too swift and thorough. There is a story of an enormously fat old Boer who was seated on the veld with his horse at his side, when suddenly a band of armed natives rushed to attack him. “Oh, God, help!” he cried in his native taal, as he prepared to heave his huge form into the saddle. Having thus invoked divine assistance, this Dutch Falstaff went at the task with such a will that in a trice he found himself not on the horse, but over it, lying upon his back, indeed, among the grasses. “O God!” that deluded burgher exclaimed, reproachfully, as the Kaffirs came up and speared him, “Thou hast helped a great deal too much!”

At this moment Morris felt very much like this stout but simple dweller in the wilderness. He would have preferred to coquet with the enemy for a while from the safety of his saddle. But Providence willed it otherwise.

“Won’t you come out, Mary?” he said, with the courage which inspires men in desperate situations. He felt that it would be impossible to say those words with the electric lights looking at him like so many eyes. The thought of it, even, made him warm all over.

“I don’t know; it depends. Is there anything comfortable to sit on?”

“The deck chair,” he suggested.

“That sounds nice. I have slumbered for hours in deck chairs. Look, there’s a fur rug on that sofa, and here’s my white cape; now you get your coat, and I’ll come.”

“Thank you, no; I don’t want any coat; I am hot enough already.”

Mary turned and looked him up and down with her wondering blue eyes.

“Do you really think it safe,” she said, “to expose yourself to all sorts of unknown dangers in this unprotected condition?”

“Of course,” he answered. “I am not afraid of the night air even in October.”

“Very well, very well, Morris,” she went on, and there was meaning in her voice; “then whatever happens don’t blame me. It’s so easy to be rash and thoughtless and catch a chill, and then you may become an invalid for life, or die, you know. One can’t get rid of it again—at least, not often.”

Morris looked at her with a puzzled air, and stepped through the window which he had opened, on to the lawn, whither, with a quaint little shrug of her shoulders, Mary followed him, muttering to herself:

“Now if he takes cold, it won’t be my fault.” Then she stopped, clasped her hands, and said, “Oh! what a lovely night. I am glad that we came out here.”

She was right, it was indeed lovely. High in the heavens floated a bright half-moon, across whose face the little white-edged clouds drifted in quick succession, throwing their gigantic shadows to the world beneath. All silver was the sleeping sea where the moonlight fell upon it, and when this was eclipsed, then it was all jet. To the right and left, up to the very borders of the cliff, lay the soft wreaths of roke or land-fog, covering the earth as with a cloak of down, but pierced here and there by the dim and towering shapes of trees. Yet although these curling wreaths of mist hung on the edges of the cliff like white water about to fall, they never fell, since clear to the sight, though separated from them by a gulf of translucent blackness, lay the yellow belt of sand up which, inch by inch, the tide was creeping.

And the air—no wind stirred it, though the wind was at work aloft—it was still and bright as crystal, and crisp and cold as new-iced wine, for the first autumn frost was falling.

They stood for a few moments looking at all these wonderful beauties of the mysterious night—which dwellers in the country so rarely appreciate, because to them they are common, daily things—and listening to the soft, long-drawn murmuring of the sea upon the shingle. Then they went forward to the edge of the cliff, but although Morris threw the fur rug over it Mary did not seat herself in the comfortable-looking deck chair. Her desire for repose had departed. She preferred to lean upon the low grey wall in whose crannies grew lichens, tiny ferns, and, in their season, harebells and wallflowers. Morris came and leant at her side; for a while they both stared at the sea.

“Pray, are you making up poetry?” she inquired at last.

“Why do you ask such silly questions?” he answered, not without indignation.

“Because you keep muttering to yourself, and I thought that you were trying to get the lines to scan. Also the sea, and the sky, and the night suggest poetry, don’t they?”

Morris turned his head and looked at her.

“You suggest it,” he said, with desperate earnestness, “in all that shining white, especially when the moon goes in. Then you look like a beautiful spirit new lit upon the edge of the world.”

At first Mary was pleased, the compliment was obvious, and, coming from Morris, great. She had never heard him say so much as that before. Then she thought an instant, and the echo of the word “spirit” came back to her mind, and jarred upon it with a little sudden shock. Even when he had a lovely woman at his side must his fancy be wandering to these unearthly denizens and similes.

“Please, Morris,” she said almost sharply, “do not compare me to a spirit. I am a woman, nothing more, and if it is not enough that I should be a woman, then——” she paused, to add, “I beg your pardon, I know you meant to be nice, but once I had a friend who went in for spirits—table-turning ones I mean—with very bad results, and I detest the name of them.”

Morris took this rebuff better than might have been expected.

“Would you object if one ventured to call you an angel?” he asked.

“Not if the word was used in a terrestrial sense. It excites a vision of possibilities, and the fib is so big that anyone must pardon it.”

“Very well, then; I call you that.”

“Thank you, I should be delighted to return the compliment. Can you think of any celestial definition appropriate to a young gentleman with dark eyes?”

“Oh! Mary, please stop making fun of me,” said Morris, with something like a groan.

“Why?” she asked innocently. “Besides I wasn’t making fun. It’s only my way of carrying on conversation; they taught it me at school, you know.”

Morris made no answer; in fact, he did not know what on earth to say, or rather how to find the fitting words. After all, it was an accident and not his own intelligence that freed him from his difficulty. Mary moved a little, causing the white cloak, which was unfastened, to slip from her shoulders. Morris put out his hand to catch it, and met her hand. In another instant he had thrown his arm round her, drawn her to him, and kissed her on the lips. Then, abashed at what he had done, he let her go and picked up the cloak.

“Might I ask?” began Mary in her usual sweet, low tones. Then her voice broke, and her blue eyes filled with tears.

“I beg your pardon; I am a brute,” began Morris, utterly abased by the sight of these tears, which glimmered like pearls in the moonlight, “but, of course, you know what I mean.”

Mary shook her head vacantly. Apparently she could not trust herself to speak.

“Dear, will you take me?”

She made no answer; only, after pausing for some few seconds as though lost in thought, with a little action more eloquent than any speech, she leant herself ever so slightly towards him.

Afterwards, as she lay in his arms, words came to him readily enough:

“I am not worth your having,” he said. “I know I am an odd fellow, not like other men; my very failings have not been the same as other men’s. For instance—before heaven it is true—you are the first woman whom I ever kissed, as I swear to you that you shall be the last. Then, what else am I? A failure in the very work that I have chosen, and the heir to a bankrupt property! Oh! it is not fair; I have no right to ask you!”

“I think it quite fair, and here I am the judge, Morris.” Then, sentence by sentence, she went on, not all at once, but with breaks and pauses.

“You asked me just now if I loved you, and I told you—Yes. But you did not ask me when I began to love you. I will tell you all the same. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t; no, not since I was a little girl. It was you who grew away from me, not me from you, when you took to studying mysticism and aerophones, and were repelled by all women, myself included.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “Don’t remind me of my dead follies. Some things are born in the blood.”

“Quite so, and they remain in the bone. I understand. Morris, unless you maltreat me wilfully—which I am sure you would never do—I shall always understand.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asked in a shaken voice. “I feel that you are afraid.”

“Oh, one or two things; that you might overwork yourself, for instance. Or, lest you should find that after all you are more human than you imagine, and be taken possession of by some strange Stella coming out of nowhere.”

“What do you mean, and why do you use that name?” he said amazed.

“What I say, dear. As for that name, I heard it accidentally at table to-night, and it came to my lips—of itself. It seemed to typify what I meant, and to suggest a wandering star—such as men like you are fond of following.”

“Upon my honour,” said Morris, “I will do none of these things.”

“If you can help it, you will do none of them. I know it well enough. I hope and believe that there will never be a shadow between us while we live. But, Morris, I take you, risks and all, because it has been my chance to love you and nobody else. Otherwise, I should think twice; but love doesn’t stop at risks.”

“What have I done to deserve this?” groaned Morris.

“I cannot see. I should very much like to know,” replied Mary, with a touch of her old humour.

It was at this moment that Colonel Monk, happening to come round the corner of the house, walking on the grass, and followed by Mr. Porson, saw a sight which interested him. With one hand he pointed it out to Porson, at the same moment motioning him to silence with the other. Then, taking his brother-in-law by the arm, he dragged him back round the corner of the house.

“They make a pretty picture there in the moonlight, don’t they, John, my boy?” he said. “Come, we had better go back into the study and talk over matters till they have done. Even the warmth of their emotions won’t keep out the night air for ever.”