talking in this way when we scarcely know each other even as friends, and you have to keep me at a distance; I see it on your face. Do you think there is a danger that I should be less respectful to you than I ought? That’s because you don’t understand me. I’ve spoken in rough, hasty words, because to be near you takes all sense from me. Look, I’m quieter now. What I ought to have said at first is this. You’re prejudiced against me; you’ve heard all sorts of tales; I know well enough what people say about me—well, I want you to know me better. We’ll leave all other feelings aside. We’ll say I just wish you to think of me in a just way, a friendly way, nothing more. It’s impossible for you to do more than that at first. No doubt even your father has told you that I have a hasty temper, which leads me to say and do things I’m soon sorry for. It’s true enough, but that doesn’t prove that I am a brute, and that I can’t mend myself. You’ve heard things laid to my charge that are false—about my doings in my own home—you know what I mean. Get to know me better, and some day I’ll tell you the whole truth. Now it’s only this I ask of you—be just to me. You’re not a woman like these in Dunfield who talk and talk behind one’s back; though I have seen so little of you, don’t I know the difference between you and them? I’m ignorant enough, compared with you, but I can feel what it is that puts you above all other women. It must be that that makes me mad to gain a kind word from you. One word—that you’ll try to think of me; and I’ll live on that as long as I can.’
The mere utterances help little to an understanding of the terrible force of entreaty he put into this speech. His face, his hands, the posture of his body, all joined in pleading. He had cast off all shamefacedness, and spoke as if his life depended on the answer she would return; the very lack of refinement in his tone, in his pronunciation of certain words, made his appeal the more pathetic. With the quickness of jealousy, he had guessed at the meaning there might lie in Emily’s reluctance to hear him, but he dared not entertain the thought; it was his passionate instinct to plead it down. Whatever it might be that she had in mind, she must first hear him. As he spoke, he watched her features with the eagerness of desire, of fear; to do so was but to inflame his passion. It was an extraordinary struggle between the force of violent appetite and the constraint of love in the higher sense. How the former had been excited, it would be hard to explain. Wilfrid Athel had submitted to the same influence. Her beauty was of the kind which, leaving the ordinary man untouched, addressed itself with the strangest potency to an especially vehement nature here and there. Her mind, uttering itself in the simplest phrases, laid a spell upon certain other minds set apart and chosen. She could not speak but the soul of this rude mill-owner was exalted beyond his own intelligence.
Forced to wait the end of his speech, Emily stood with her head bowed in sadness. Fear had passed; she recognised the heart-breaking sincerity of his words, and compassionated him. When he became silent, she could not readily reply. He was speaking again, below his breath.
‘You are thinking? I know how you can’t help regarding me. Try only to feel for me.’
‘There is only one way in which I can answer you,’ she said; ‘I owe it to you to hide nothing. I feel deeply the sincerity of all you have said, and be sure, Mr. Dagworthy, that I will never think of you unjustly or unkindly. But I can promise nothing more; I have already given my love.’
Her voice faltered before the last word, the word she would never lightly utter. But it must be spoken now; no paraphrase would confirm her earnestness sufficiently.
Still keeping her eyes on the ground, she knew that he had started.
‘You have promised to marry some one?’ he asked, as if it were necessary to have the fact affirmed in the plainest words before he could accept it.
She hoped that silence might be her answer.
‘Have you? Do you mean that?’
‘I have.’
She saw that he was turning away from her, and with an effort she looked at him. She wished she had not; his anguish expressed itself like an evil passion; his teeth were set with a cruel savageness. It was worse when he caught her look and tried to smile.
‘Then I suppose that’s—that’s the end,’ he said, as if he would make an effort to joke upon it, though his voice all but failed in speaking the few words.
He walked a little apart, then approached her again.
‘You don’t say this just to put me off?’ he asked, with a roughness which was rather the effect of his attempt to keep down emotion than intentional.
‘I have told you the truth,’ Emily replied firmly.
‘Do other people know it? Do the Cartwrights?’
‘You are the only one to whom I have spoken of it.’
‘Except your father and mother, you mean?’
‘They do not know.’
Though so troubled, she was yet able to ask herself whether his delicacy was sufficiently developed to enjoin silence. The man had made such strange revelation of himself, she felt unable to predict his course. No refinement in him would now have surprised her; but neither would any outbreak of boorishness. He seemed capable of both. His next question augured ill.
‘Of course it is not any one in Dunfield?’
‘It is not.’
Jealousy was torturing him. He was quite conscious that he should have refrained from a single question, yet he could no more keep these back than he could the utterance of his passion.
‘Will you—’
He hesitated.
‘May I leave you, Mr. Dagworthy?’ Emily asked, seeing that he was not likely to quit her. She moved to take the books from the chair.
‘One minute more.—Will you tell me who it is?—I am a brute to ask you, but—if you—Good God! How shall I bear this?’
He turned his back upon her; she saw him quiver. It was her impulse to walk from the garden, but she feared to pass him.
