London and let us be married as soon as the arrangements can be made.’
‘I don’t quite understand, Wilfrid. Do you mean that your father approves this?’
‘They all went off to-day. He knows, no doubt, what my intention is. In a matter like this I must judge for myself.’
She was silent, then asked with apprehension, ‘Has it caused trouble?’
‘Of the kind which passes as soon as it has been well talked about,’ he answered with a smile; ‘nothing more serious.’
She could not meet his look.
‘And you wish not to return to Oxford?’
‘I have done with that. I see now that to go back and play the schoolboy would have been impossible; all that is over and a new life beginning—you will be in readiness to come up as soon as I scud for you?’
She looked in his face now with pleading.
‘It is too hasty, Wilfrid. It was better, far better, that we should wait till next year. Can it be your father’s wish that your marriage should take place in his absence? You know that I have no foolish desires; the more simply everything is done the better it will please me. But I would, I would have it done with your father’s goodwill. I foresaw his objections only too well; they are natural, it could not be otherwise; but I hoped that time would help. Let us wait!’
She closed both hands on his, and gazed at him steadily.
‘I think you must be guided by me, Emily,’ he replied, with his calm self-assertiveness. ‘There is no reason why we should wait. My father is a man who very sensibly accepts the accomplished fact. His own marriage, I may tell you, was an affair of decision in the face of superficial objections, and he will only think the better of me for following his example. You say, and I am sure, that you care nothing for the show of a wedding; if you did, I should not be here at this moment. It is only for that that we need postpone the marriage. I will take rooms till I can find a house and have it made ready for us.’
Emily kept silence. She had released his hand. There were signs on her face of severe inward conflict.
‘Will you let me go and see your parents?’ he asked. ‘Shall our marriage take place here? To me it is the same; I would only be ruled by your choice. May I go home with you now?’
‘I would say yes if I could make up my mind to a marriage at once,’ she answered. ‘Dear, let me persuade you.’
‘The sound of your words persuades too strongly against their sense, Emily,’ he said tenderly. ‘I will not put off our marriage a day longer than forms make necessary.’
‘Wilfrid, let me say what—’
‘I have scraps of superstition in my nature,’ he broke in with a half laugh. ‘Fate does not often deal so kindly as in giving you to me; I dare not
Emily drank in the vehement flow of words with delight and fear. It was this virile eagerness, this force of personality, which had before charmed her thought into passiveness, and made her senses its subject; but a stronger motive of resistance actuated her now. In her humility she could not deem the instant gain of herself to be an equivalent to him for what he would certainly, and what he might perchance, lose. She feared that he had disguised his father’s real displeasure, and she could not reconcile herself to the abrupt overthrow of all the purposes Wilfrid had entertained before he knew her. She strove with all the energy of her own strong character to withstand him for his good.
‘Wilfrid, let it at least be postponed till your father’s return. If his mind is what you say, he will by then have fully accepted your views. I respect your father. I owe him consideration; he is prejudiced against me now, and I would gain his goodwill. Just because we are perfectly independent let us have regard for others; better, a thousand times better, that he should be reconciled to our marriage before it takes place than perforce afterwards. Is it for my constancy, or your own, that you fear?’
‘I do not doubt your love, and my own is unalterable. I fear circumstances; but what has fear to do with it; I wish to make you my own; the empire of my passion is all-subduing. I will not wait! If you refuse me, I have been mistaken; you do not love me.’
‘Those are only words,’ she answered, a proud smile lighting the trouble of her countenance. ‘You have said that you do not doubt my love, and in your heart you cannot. Answer me one question, Wilfrid: have you made little of your father’s opposition, in order to spare me pain? Is it more serious than you are willing to tell me?’
The temptation was strong to reply with an affirmative. If she believed his father to be utterly irreconcilable, there could be no excuse for lingering; yet his nobler self prevailed, to her no word of falseness.
‘I have told you the truth. His opposition is temporary. When you are my wife he will be to you as to any wife I could have chosen, I am convinced of it.’
‘Then more than ever I entreat you to wait, only till his return to England. If you fail then, I will resist no longer. Show him this much respect, dearest; join him abroad now; let him see that you desire his kindness. Is he not disappointed that you mean to break off your career at Oxford? Why should you do that? You promised me—did you not promise me, Wilfrid, that you would go on to the end?’
‘I cannot! I have no longer the calmness, no longer the old ambitions,—how trivial they were!’
‘And yet there will come a day when you will regret that you left your course unfinished, just because you fell in love with a foolish girl.’
‘Do not speak like that, Emily; I hate that way of regarding love! My passion for you is henceforth my life; if it is trifling, so is my whole being, my whole existence. There is no sacrifice possible for me that I should ever regret.
