I
A certain March night of this present “waning age” had settled down upon the woods and the park and the parapets of Ambrose Towers. The harsh stable-clock struck a quarter-to-ten. Thereupon a girl in light evening attire and wraps came through the entrance-hall, opened the front door and the small wrought-iron gate beyond it which led to the terrace, and stepped into the moonlight. Such a person, such a night, and such a place were unexceptionable materials for a scene in that poetical drama of two which the world has often beheld; which leads up to a contract that causes a slight sinking in the poetry, and a perceptible lack of interest in the play.
She moved so quietly that the alert birds resting in the great cedar tree never stirred. Gliding across its funereal shadow over a smooth plush of turf, as far as to the Grand Walk whose pebbles shone like the floor-stones of the Apocalyptic City, she paused and looked back at the old brick walls—red in the daytime, sable now—at the shrouded mullions, the silhouette of the tower; though listening rather than seeing seemed her object incoming to the pause. The clammy wings of a bat brushed past her face, startling her and making her shiver a little. The stamping of one or two horses in their stalls surprised her by its distinctness and isolation. The servants’ offices were on the other side of the house, and the lady who, with the exception of the girl on the terrace, was its only occupant, was resting on a sofa behind one of the curtained windows. So Rosalys went on her way unseen, trod the margin of the lake, and plunged into the distant shrubberies.
The clock had reached ten. As the last strokes of the hour rang out a young man scrambled down the sunk-fence bordering the pleasure-ground, leapt the iron railing within, and joined the girl who stood awaiting him. In the half-light he could not see how her full underlip trembled, or the fire of joy that kindled in her eyes. But perhaps he guessed, from daylight experiences, since he passed his arm round her shoulders with assurance, and kissed her ready mouth many times. Her head still resting against his arm they walked towards a bench, the rough outlines of which were touched at one end only by the moon-rays. At the dark end the pair sat down.
“I cannot come again” said the girl.
“Oh?” he vaguely returned. “This is new. What has happened? I thought you said your mother supposed you to be working at your Harmony, and would never imagine our meeting here?” The voice sounded just a trifle hard for a lover’s.
“No, she would not. And I still detest deceiving her. I would do it for no one but you, Jim. But what I meant was this: I feel that it can all lead to nothing. Mother is not a bit more worldly than most people, but she naturally does not want her only child to marry a man who has nothing but the pay of an officer in the Line to live upon. At her death (you know she has only a life-interest here), I should have to go away unless my uncle, who succeeds, chose to take me to stay with him. I have no fortune of my own beyond a mere pittance. Two hundred a year.”
Jim’s reply was something like a sneer at the absent lady:
“You may as well add to the practical objection the sentimental one; that she wouldn’t allow you to change your fine old crusted name for mine, which is merely the older one of the little freeholder turned out of this spot by your ancestor when he came.”
“Dear, dear Jim, don’t say those horrid things! As if I had ever even thought of that for a moment!”
He shook her hand off impatiently, and walked out into the moonlight. Certainly as far as physical outline went he might have been the direct product of a line of Paladins or hereditary Crusaders. He was tall, straight of limb, with an aquiline nose, and a mouth fitfully scornful. Rosalys sat almost motionless, watching him. There was no mistaking the ardour of her feelings; her power over him seemed to be lessened by his consciousness of his influence upon the lower and weaker side of her nature. It gratified him as a man to feel it; and though she was beautiful enough to satisfy the senses of the critical, there was perhaps something of contempt inwoven with his love. His victory had been too easy, too complete.
“Dear Jim, you are not going to be vexed? It really isn’t my fault that I can’t come out here again! Mother will be downstairs tomorrow, and then she might take it into her head to look at any time into the schoolroom and see how the Harmony gets on.”
“And you are going off to London soon?” said Jim, still speaking gloomily.
“I am afraid so. But couldn’t you come there too? I know your leave is not up for a great many weeks?”
He was silent for longer than she had ever known him at these times. Rosalys left her seat on the bench and threw her arms impulsively round him.
“I can’t go away unless you will come to London when we do, Jim!”
“I will; but on one condition.”
“What condition? You frighten me!”
“That you will marry me when I do join you there.”
The quick breath that heaved in Rosalys ebbed silently; and she leant on the rustic bench with one hand, a trembling being apparent in her garments.
“You really—mean it, Jim darling?”
He swore that he did; that life was quite unendurable to him as he then experienced it. When she was once his wife nothing could come between them; but of course the marriage need not be known for a time—indeed must not. He could not take her abroad. The climate of Burma would be too trying for her; and, besides, they really would not have enough to live upon.
“Couldn’t we get on as other people do?” said Rosalys, trying not to cry at these arguments. “I am so tired of concealment, and I don’t like to marry privately! It seems to me, much as I love being with you, that there is a sort of—well—vulgarity in our clandestine meetings, as we now enjoy them. Therefore how should I ever have strength enough to hide the fact of my being your wife, to face my mother day after day with the shadow of this secret between us?”
For all answer Jim kissed her, and stroked her silky brown curls.
“I suppose I shall end in agreeing with you—I always do!” she said, her mouth quivering. “Though I can be very dogged and obstinate too, Jim! Do you know that all my governesses have said I was the most stubborn child they ever came across? But then, in that case, my temper must be really aroused. You have never seen me as I am when angry. Perhaps, Jim, you would get to hate me?” She looked at him wistfully with her wet eyes.
“I shall never cease to love you desperately, as I do now!” declared the young man. “How lovely you look, little Rosalys, with that one moonbeam making your forehead like pure white marble. But time is passing. You must go back, my darling, I’m afraid. And you won’t fail me in London? I shall make all the plans. Goodbye—goodbye!”
One clinging, intermittent kiss; and then from the shadow in which he stood Jim watched her light figure past the lake, and hurrying along in the shelter of the yew hedges towards the great house, asleep under the reaching deeps of sky, and the vacant gaze of the round white moon.