“Alice,” he said, “I am a man once again. It is only now that I can tell you what I have suffered during these last few years.” He still held her hand, but he had not as yet attempted any closer embrace. She knew that she was standing away from him awkwardly, almost showing her repugnance to him; but it was altogether beyond her power to assume an attitude of ordinary ease. “Alice,” he continued, “I feel that I am a strong man again, armed to meet the world at all points. Will you not let me thank you for what you have done for me?”
She must speak to him! Though the doing so should be ever so painful to her, she must say some word to him which should have in it a sound of kindness. After all, it was his undoubted right to come to her, and the footing on which he assumed to stand was simply that which she herself had given to him. It was not his fault if at this moment he inspired her with disgust rather than with love.
“I have done nothing for you, George,” she said, “nothing at all.” Then she got her hand away from him, and retreated back to a sofa where she seated herself, leaving him still standing in the space before the fire. “That you may do much for yourself is my greatest hope. If I can help you, I will do so most heartily.” Then she became thoroughly ashamed of her words, feeling that she was at once offering to him the use of her purse.
“Of course you will help me,” he said. “I am full of plans, all of which you must share with me. But now, at this moment, my one great plan is that in which you have already consented to be my partner. Alice, you are my wife now. Tell me that it will make you happy to call me your husband.”
Not for worlds could she have said so at this moment. It was ill-judged in him to press her thus. He should already have seen, with half an eye, that no such triumph as that which he now demanded could be his on this occasion. He had had his triumph when, in the solitude of his own room, with quiet sarcasm he had thrown on one side of him the letter in which she had accepted him, as though the matter had been one almost indifferent to him. He had no right to expect the double triumph. Then he had frankly told himself that her money would be useful to him. He should have been contented with that conviction, and not have required her also to speak to him soft winning words of love.
“That must be still distant, George,” she said. “I have suffered so much!”
“And it has been my fault that you have suffered; I know that. These years of misery have been my doing.” It was, however, the year of coming misery that was the most to be dreaded.
“I do not say that,” she replied, “nor have I ever thought it. I have myself and myself only to blame.” Here he altogether misunderstood her, believing her to mean that the fault for which she blamed herself had been committed in separating herself from him on that former occasion.
“Alice, dear, let bygones be bygones.”
“Bygones will not be bygones. It may be well for people to say so, but it is never true. One might as well say so to one’s body as to one’s heart. But the hairs will grow grey, and the heart will grow cold.”
“I do not see that one follows upon the other,” said George. “My hair is growing very grey;”—and to show that it was so, he lifted the dark lock from the side of his forehead, and displayed the incipient grizzling of the hair from behind. “If grey hairs make an old man, Alice, you will marry an old husband; but even you shall not be allowed to say that my heart is old.”
That word “husband,” which her cousin had twice used, was painful to Alice’s ear. She shrunk from it with palpable bodily suffering. Marry an old husband! His age was nothing to the purpose, though he had been as old as Enoch. But she was again obliged to answer him. “I spoke of my own heart,” said she: “I sometimes feel that it has grown very old.”
“Alice, that is hardly cheering to me.”
“You have come to me too quickly, George, and do not reflect how much there is that I must remember. You have said that bygones should be bygones. Let them be so, at any rate as far as words are concerned. Give me a few months in which I may learn,—not to forget them, for that will be impossible,—but to abstain from speaking of them.”
There was something in her look as she spoke, and in the tone of her voice that was very sad. It struck him forcibly, but it struck him with anger rather than with sadness. Doubtless her money had been his chief object when he offered to renew his engagement with her. Doubtless he would have made no such offer had she been penniless, or even had his own need been less pressing. But, nevertheless, he desired something more than money. The triumph of being preferred to John Grey,—of having John Grey sent altogether adrift, in order that his old love might be recovered, would have been too costly a luxury for him to seek, had he not in seeking it been able to combine prudence with the luxury. But though his prudence had been undoubted, he desired the luxury also. It was on a calculation of the combined advantage that he had made his second offer to his cousin. As he would by no means have consented to proceed with the arrangement without the benefit of his cousin’s money, so also did he feel unwilling to dispense with some expression of her love for him, which would be to him triumphant. Hitherto in their present interview there had certainly been no expression of her love.
“Alice,” he said, “your greeting to me is hardly all that I had hoped.”
“Is it not?” said she. “Indeed, George, I am sorry that you should be disappointed; but what can I say? You would not have me affect a lightness of spirit which I do not feel?”
“If you wish,” said he, very slowly,—”if you wish to retract your letter to me, you now have my leave to do so.”
What an opportunity was this of escape! But she had not the courage to accept it. What girl, under such circumstances, would have had such courage? How often are offers made to us which we would almost give our eyes to accept, but dare not accept because we fear the countenance of the offerer? “I do not wish to retract my letter,” said she, speaking as slowly as he had spoken; “but I wish to be left awhile, that I may recover my strength of mind. Have you not heard doctors say, that muscles which have been strained, should be allowed rest, or they will never entirely renew their tension? It is so with me now; if I could be quiet for a few months, I think I could learn to face the future with a better courage.”
“And is that all you can say to me, Alice?”
“What would you have me say?”
“I would fain hear one word of love from you; is that unreasonable? I would wish to know from your own lips that you have satisfaction in the renewed prospect of our union; is that too ambitious? It might have been that I was over-bold in pressing my suit upon you again; but as you accepted it, have I not a right to expect that you should show me that you have been happy in accepting it?”
But she had not been happy in accepting it. She was not happy now that she had accepted it. She could not show to him any sign of such joy as that which he desired to see. And now, at this moment, she feared with an excessive fear that there would come some demand for an outward demonstration of love, such as he in his position might have a right to make. She seemed to be aware that this might be prevented only by such demeanour on her part as that which she had practised, and she could not, therefore, be stirred to the expression of any word of affection. She listened to his appeal, and when it was finished she made no reply. If he chose to take her in dudgeon, he must do so. She would make for him any sacrifice that was possible to her, but this sacrifice was not possible.
“And you have not a word to say to me?” he asked. She looked up at him, and saw that the cicature on his face was becoming ominous; his eyes were bent upon her with all their forbidding