“Peasant!” I laughed. “Norah, you are the best lady I have ever seen! Why, you are like a queen — what a queen ought to be!”
“I am proud and happy, Arthur, that you think so; but still I am only a peasant. Look at me — at my dress. Yes, I know you like it, and I shall always prize it because it found favor in your eyes.”
She smiled happily, but went on:
“Dear, I am speaking very truly. My life and surroundings are not yours. You are lifting me to a higher grade in life, Arthur, and I want to be worthy of it and of you. I do not want any of your family or your friends to pity you and say, ‘Poor fellow, he has made a sad mistake. Look at her manners; she is not of us.’ I could not bear to hear or to know that such was said — that any one should have to pity the man I love, and to have that pity because of me. Arthur, it would break my heart.”
As she spoke the tears welled up in the deep dark eyes and rolled unchecked down her cheeks. I caught her to my breast with the sudden instinct of protection, and cried out:
“Norah, no one on earth could say such a thing of you — you who would lift a man, not lower him. You could not be ungraceful if you tried; and as for my family and friends, if there is one who will not hold out both hands to you and love you, he or she is no kin or friend of mine.”
“But, Arthur, they might be right. I have learned enough to know that there is so much more to learn — that the great world you live in is so different from our quiet, narrow life here. Indeed, I do not mean to be nervous as to the future, or to make any difficulties; but, dear, I should like to be able to do all that is right and necessary as your wife. Remember, that when I leave here I shall not have one of my own kin or friends to tell me anything — from whom I could ask advice. They do not themselves even know what I might want — not one of them all. Your world and mine, dear, are so different — as yet.”
“But, Norah, shall I not be always by your side to ask?” I felt very superior and very strong, as well as very loving, as I spoke.
“Yes, yes; but oh, Arthur, can you not understand? I love you so that I would like to be, even in the eyes of others, all that you could wish. But, dear, you must understand and help me here. I cannot reason with you. Even now I feel my lack of knowledge, and it makes me fearful. Even now” — her voice died away in a sob, and she hid her beautiful eyes with her hand.
“My darling, my darling!” I said to her passionately, all the true lover in me awake, “tell me what it is that you wish, so that I may try to judge with all my heart.”
“Arthur, I want you to let me go to school — to a good school for a while — a year or two before we are married. Oh, I should work so hard! I should try so earnestly to improve, for I should feel that every hour of honest work brought me higher and nearer to your level!”
My heart was more touched than even my passion gave me words to tell; and I tried, and tried hard, to tell her what I felt, and in my secret heart a remorseful thought went up: “What have I done in my life to be worthy of so much love?”
Then, as we sat hand in hand, we discussed how it was to be done, for that it was to be done we were both agreed. I had told her that we should so arrange it that she should go for awhile to Paris, and then to Dresden, and finish up with an English school. That she could learn languages, and that among them would be Italian; but that she would not go to Italy until we went together — on our honey-moon. She bent her head and listened in silent happiness; and when I spoke of our journey together to Italy, and how we would revel in old-world beauty — in the softness and light and colour of that magic land — the delicate porcelain of her shell-like ear became tinged with pink, and I bent over and kissed it. And then she turned and threw herself on my breast, and hid her face.
As I looked I saw the pink spread downward and grow deeper and deeper, till her neck and all became flushed with crimson. And then she put me aside, rose up, and with big brave eyes looked me full in the face through all her deep embarrassment, and said to me:
“Arthur, of course I don’t know much of the great world, but I suppose it is not usual for a man to pay for the schooling of a lady before she is his wife, whatever might be arranged between them afterwards. You know that my dear father has no money for such a purpose as we have spoken of, and so if you think it is wiser, and would be less hardly spoken of in your family, I would marry you before I went — if — if you wished it. But we would wait till after I came from school to — to — to go to Italy,” and while the flush deepened almost to a painful degree, she put her hands before her face and turned away.
Such a noble sacrifice of her own feelings and her own wishes — and although I felt it in my heart of hearts I am sure none but a woman could fully understand it — put me upon my mettle, and it was with truth I spoke:
“Norah, if anything could have added to my love and esteem for you, your attitude to me in this matter has done it. My darling, I shall try hard all my life to be worthy of you, and that you may never, through any act of mine, decline for a moment from the standard you have fixed. God knows I could have no greater pride or joy than that this very moment I should call you my wife. My dear, my dear, I shall count the very hours until that happy time shall come! But all shall be as you wish. You will go to the schools we spoke of, and your father shall pay for them. He will not refuse, I know, and what is needed he shall have. If there be anyway that he would prefer — that suits your wishes — it shall be done. More than this, if he thinks it right, we can be married before you go, and you can keep your own name until my time comes to claim you.”
“No, no, Arthur! When once I shall bear your name I shall be too proud of it to be willing to have any other. But I want, when I do bear it, to bear it worthily — I want to come to you as I think your wife should come.”
“My dear, dear Norah — my wife to be — all shall be as you wish.”
Here we heard the footsteps of Joyce approaching.
“I had better tell him,” she said.
When he came in she had his dinner ready. He greeted me warmly.
“Won’t ye stay?” he said. “Don’t go unless ye wish to.”
“I think, sir, Norah wants to have a chat with you when you have had your dinner.”
Norah smiled a kiss at me as I went out. At the door I turned and said to her:
“I shall be in the Cliff Fields in case I am wanted.”
I went there straightway, and sat on the table rock in the centre of the fields, and thought and thought. In all my thoughts there was no cloud. Each day, each hour, seemed to reveal new beauties in the girl I loved, and I felt as if all the world were full of sunshine, and all the future of hope; and I built new resolves to be worthy of the good fortune which had come upon me.
It was not long before Norah came to me, and said that she had told her father, and that he wished to speak with me. She said that he quite agreed about the school, and that there would be no difficulty made by him on account of any false pride about my helping in the task. We had but one sweet minute together on the rock, and one kiss; and then, hand in hand, we hurried back to the cottage, and found Joyce waiting for us, smoking his pipe.
Norah took me inside, and, after kissing her father, came shyly and kissed me also, and went out. Joyce began:
“Me daughter has been tellin’ me about the plan of her goin’ to school, an’ her an’ me’s agreed that it’s the right thing to do. Of coorse, we’re not of your class, an’ if ye wish for her it is only right an’ fair that she should be brought up to the level of the people that she’s goin’ into. It’s not in me own power to do all this for her, an’ although I didn’t give her the schoolin’ that the quality has, I’ve done already more nor min like me mostly does. Norah knows more nor any girl about here. An’ as ye’re to have the benefit of yer wife’s schoolin’, I don’t see no