A Life's Morning

Our love is what we choose to make it. Regard it as a foolish pastime, and we are no better than the vulgar crowd—we know how they speak of it. What detestable thoughts your words brought to my mind! Have you not heard men and women, those who have outlived such glimpses of high things as nature ever sent them, making a jest of love in young lives, treating it, from the height of their wisdom forsooth, as a silly dream of boys and girls? If we ever live to speak or think like that, it will indeed be time to have done with the world. Even as I love you now, my heart’s darling, I shall love you when years of intimacy are like some happy journey behind us, and on into the very portal of death. Regret! How paltry all will seem that was not of the essence of our love! And who knows how short our time may be? When the end comes, will it be easy to bear, the thought that we lost one day, one moment of union, out of respect for idle prejudices which vanish as soon as they find themselves ineffectual? Will not the longest life be all too short for us?’

‘Forgive me the words, dear. Love is no less sacred to me.’

Her senses were playing the traitor; or—which you will—were seconding love’s triumph.

‘I shall come home with you now,’ he said. ‘You will let me?’

Why was he not content to win her promise? This proposal, by reminding her most strongly of the inevitable difficulties her marriage would entail, forced her again into resistance.

‘Not now, Wilfrid. I have not said a word of this; I must prepare them for it.’

‘You have not spoken of me?’

‘I would not do so till I—till everything was more certain.’

‘Certain!’ he cried impatiently. ‘Why do you torture me so, Emily? What uncertainty is there? Everything is uncertain, if you like to make it so. Is there something in your mind that I do not understand?’

‘You must remember, Wilfrid, that this is a strange, new thing in my life. It has come to me so suddenly, that even yet I cannot make it part of my familiar self. It has been impossible to speak of it to others.’

‘Do you think I take it as a matter of course? Is your love less a magic gift to me? I wake in a terror lest I have only dreamed of it; but then the very truth comes back, and shall I make myself miserable with imagining uncertainties, when there need be none?’

Emily hesitated before speaking again.

‘I have told you very little about my home,’ she said. ‘You know that we are very poor.’

She could not say it as simply as she wished; she was angry with herself to recognise how nearly her feeling was one of shame, what a long habit of reason it needed to expel the unintelligent prejudice which the world bestows at birth.

‘I could almost say I am glad of it,’ Wilfrid replied. ‘We shall have it in our power, you and I, to help so much.’

‘There are many reasons,’ she continued, too much occupied with her thoughts to dwell on what he said, ‘why I should have time to prepare my father and mother. You will let me write the things which it is not very easy to say.’

‘Say what you will, and keep silence on what you will, Emily. I cannot give so much consequence to these external things. You and I are living souls, and as such we judge each other. Shall I fret about the circumstances in which chance has cased your life? As reasonable if I withdrew my love from you because one day the colour of your glove did not please me. Time you need. You shall have it; a week, ten days. Then I will come myself and fetch you,—or you shall come to London alone, as you please.’

‘Let it be till your father returns.’

‘But he will be two months away.’

‘You will join him in Switzerland. Your health requires it.’

‘My health! Oh, how tired I am of that word! Spare it me, you at least, Emily. I am well in body and mind; your love would have raised me if I had lain at the point of death. I cannot leave England alone; I have made up my mind that you shall go with me. Have I then no power to persuade you? You will not indeed refuse?’

He looked at her almost in despair. He had not anticipated more than the natural hesitancy which he would at once overcome by force of passion. There was something terrible to him in the disclosure of a quiet force of will equal to his own. Frustration of desire joined with irritated instincts of ascendency to agitate him almost beyond endurance.

Emily gazed at him with pleading as passionate as his own need.

‘Do you distrust me?’ he asked suddenly, overcome with an intolerable suspicion. At the same moment he dropped her hand, and his gaze grew cold.

‘Distrust you?’ She could not think that she understood him.

‘Do you fear to come to London with me?’

‘Wilfrid?’

Her bosom heaved with passionate resentment of his thought.

‘Is that how you understand my motives?’ she asked, with tremulous, subdued earnestness, fixing upon him a gaze which he could not meet.

‘Yes,’ he answered, below his breath, ‘in a moment when love of you has made me mad.’

He turned away, leaning with one hand upon the trunk. In the silence which followed he appeared to be examining the shapeless ruins, which, from this point of view, stood out boldly against the sky.

‘When was this castle destroyed?’ he asked presently, in a steady voice.

He received no answer, and turned his eyes to her again. Emily’s face was strung into a hard intensity. He laid his hand once more upon hers, and spoke with self-control.

‘You do not know the strength of a man’s love. In that moment it touched the borders of hate. I know that your