A Sovereign Remedy Part 33

She smiled at him brilliantly. "And you would--you couldn't help it!

But that is no reason why we should marry. It seems to me we have mixed things up somehow. No! that is no reason at all."

"Perhaps not," he admitted, following her thought. "Then marry me for some other reason, my dear."

She shook her head. "There is only one reason for marriage," she said, with a wisdom born of the untrammelled teaching of Nature, "and if I were to marry you--I should be afraid--yes, Ned! I will tell you the truth because you are certain to understand--I should be afraid of loving you too much. I--I don't want to love like that."

He sat bewildered, his pa.s.sion dying at the hands of truth. Then he muttered, half to himself, feeling with a rush of shame how far he was from her, how little he really understood her innocence of evil, "Heaven knows why you should--I am a miserable beast--but----. Oh! I hope to G.o.d you would, my dear--I hope to G.o.d you would!"

"Why?" she asked calmly, and he had no answer ready. So he harked back after a while to a lower level.

"That is the most original reason for refusing a man I ever heard," he said whimsically. "Have you any others of the same sort?"

She responded instantly to his mood. "Plenty!" she replied cheerfully.

"To begin with, you are far too rich. I am only just beginning to realise how I should hate to have money--besides it is wrong, you know."

"I don't know," he said dryly; "but it is quite easy to divest oneself of money. I never find the slightest difficulty in getting rid of it--so don't let that stand in your way."

It was her turn to laugh--a soft, little laugh with a hint of reproof in it.

"I don't expect you do. Ted is always saying you are reckless. Then there is grandfather; you know he doesn't like you half so much as he likes Ted----"

"The deuce he doesn't!" a.s.sented Ned, his sudden pang of jealousy softened by his sense of the comic; "but you are surely not going to marry Ted in order to please your grandfather?"

She looked at him disapprovingly, "I might marry some one worse; Ted is a dear."

He felt exasperated. "Yes! he is an uncommonly good fellow; but--you don't happen to love him. And you do--at least I think you do"--he felt that certainty might overpower his self-control--"love me."

She took no notice of this, but went on argumentatively.

"Then I don't think I like marriage in your rank of life. With a poor man, and lots of work and trouble and children, it would be very interesting; but--look at Lady Smith-Biggs! I don't know what Sir Joseph is like, of course, but she looks as if she led a dull life."

"Very!" a.s.sented Ned, back to smiles once more. "But I wouldn't, if I were you, take Lady Smith-Biggs' as a test case; there are plenty of marriages----" he paused, feeling it would be difficult with Aura's standard to adduce many examples; but then he was prepared to chuck everything, and go forth with sandal shoon into the wilderness if need be. Yes! she was right. It was hardly marriage that he wanted after all.

So for a time they sat and looked out over the pale blue mists behind which the hills loomed large, seeming to lose themselves in the pale blue sky.

"There must be something better," said the girl at last. "Oh, Ned!

there is something better!"

"Better than love," he echoed; "perhaps than some loves; not better than mine!"

"Don't people always say that? Perhaps _he_ said it to Gwen----"

"Child!" he said swiftly, "don't think of that--that was not love."

"And it was not marriage either," she replied softly; "but what you mean has nothing to do with what is called love, with what is called marriage--that is what I mean too."

He shook his head. "That is too fine for me, Aura! I want you. I am not satisfied without you."

He was so close to her that he could lay his hand on hers.

"S--s.h.!.+" she said swiftly, laying her other hand on his so as to detain it. "Listen!"

Just below them, in a sheltered corrie, grew a great holly-tree covered with berries that glowed scarlet against the distant blue. On its topmost twig, with flaming breast yellowed by the exceeding brilliance of those blood-red berries, a robin had settled itself to sing. And it sang.

Of what? Of the berries beneath its feet? Of its distant mate? Or out of the gladness of its heart of life because of the Beginning it did not remember, of the End it did not know?

Who can say? but it sang. And as it sang those two sat hand in hand, forgetful even of what humanity calls love. Forgetful of all things except that they also were dreaming the Dream of Life.

"Did I not say so?" she cried exultantly when the song had ceased.

"Did I not tell you there was something better? You had forgotten me and I had forgotten you, yet we were happy."

"Because we were hand-clasped," he answered swiftly, "because I touched you, and you touched me."

She drew her hands away and a flush came to her face.

"But don't you feel afraid--as I do? Don't you want to keep what you love apart--to keep it safe--even from yourself?"

Did he not? Was it not only this which kept him back from taking her in his arms and kissing her to the knowledge of what a man's love must be.

"Yes!" he said unsteadily, constrained to truth by hers. "But there is a love which does not stain. I'll give it you--if I can."

She looked at him with a vain regret in her eyes. "You couldn't if we were married, and I couldn't anyhow. Ah no, Ned! It would spoil it all."

"Spoil what?" he asked roughly, for he began to feel himself worsted for the time.

"The something better," she replied gaily, "let us wait for that. I really don't want to marry you, Ned. I should hate it. I knew that when I saw your iris."

"Then I wish I hadn't climbed up to put it on your window-sill and wricked my bad arm into the bargain," he said sullenly.

Her face grew grave. "Did you climb up; that was very wrong."

"Was it?" he replied shrugging his shoulders; "but I'm afraid I'm a very wrong person altogether. At the present moment I feel inclined to--to--but what is the use--you wouldn't understand. Aura! for the last time, will you marry me?"

"No, Ned, I won't."

"Then that ends it," he said recklessly. "So good-bye."

She paled a little.

"Must you go?"

"One of us must," he replied, caught in fresh hope, "unless you change your mind."

"That is impossible--but you will come back, won't you?"

He looked at her full of impatience, yet full of tenderness.

"I believe I ought to say that I won't, but----" Then he held out his hand, "I understand--apart from everything else in the world--what this love of ours--" her hand trembled in his for a second, "means to us--both. I will go away for--yes! for two months, and give you time to think. Then I will come back. Good-bye, my dear. I can only say it once more--I love you."