“Mr. Saul, don’t go on; pray don’t.” Now she did understand what was coming.
“Yes, Miss Clavering, I must go on now; but not on that account would I press you to give me an answer today. I have learned to love you, and if you can love me in return, I will take you by the hand, and you shall be my wife. I have found that in you which I have been unable not to love—not to covet that I may bind it to myself as my own forever. Will you think of this, and give me an answer when you have considered it fully?”
He had not spoken altogether amiss, and Fanny, though she was very angry with him, was conscious of this. The time he had chosen might not be considered suitable for a declaration of love, nor the place; but having chosen them, he had, perhaps, made the best of them. There had been no hesitation in his voice, and his words had been perfectly audible.
“Oh, Mr. Saul, of course I can assure you at once,” said Fanny. “There need not be any consideration. I really have never thought—” Fanny, who knew her own mind on the matter thoroughly, was hardly able to express herself plainly and without incivility. As soon as that phrase “of course” had passed her lips, she felt that it should not have been spoken. There was no need that she should insult him by telling him that such a proposition from him could have but one answer.
“No, Miss Clavering; I know you have never thought of it, and therefore it would be well that you should take time. I have not been able to make manifest to you by little signs, as men do who are less awkward, all the love that I have felt for you. Indeed, could I have done so, I should still have hesitated till I had thoroughly resolved that I might be better with a wife than without one; and had resolved also, as far as that might be possible for me, that you also would be better with a husband.”
“Mr. Saul, really that should be for me to think of.”
“And for me also. Can any man offer to marry a woman—to bind a woman for life to certain duties, and to so close an obligation, without thinking whether such bonds would be good for her as well as for himself? Of course you must think for yourself;—and so have I thought for you. You should think for yourself, and you should think also for me.”
Fanny was quite aware that as regarded herself, the matter was one which required no more thinking. Mr. Saul was not a man with whom she could bring herself to be in love. She had her own ideas as to what was loveable in men, and the eager curate, splashing through the rain by her side, by no means came up to her standard of excellence. She was unconsciously aware that he had altogether mistaken her character, and given her credit for more abnegation of the world than she pretended to possess, or was desirous of possessing. Fanny Clavering was in no hurry to get married. I do not know that she had even made up her mind that marriage would be a good thing for her; but she had an untroubled conviction that if she did marry, her husband should have a house and an income. She had no reliance on her own power of living on a potato, and with one new dress every year. A comfortable home, with nice, comfortable things around her, ease in money matters, and elegance in life, were charms with which she had not quarrelled, and, though she did not wish to be hard upon Mr. Saul on account of his mistake, she did feel that in making his proposition he had blundered. Because she chose to do her duty as a parish clergyman’s daughter, he thought himself entitled to regard her as devotée, who would be willing to resign everything to become the wife of a clergyman, who was active, indeed, but who had not one shilling of income beyond his curacy. “Mr. Saul,” she said, “I can assure you I need take no time for further thinking. It cannot be as you would have it.”
“Perhaps I have been abrupt. Indeed, I feel that it is so, though I did not know how to avoid it.”
“It would have made no difference. Indeed, indeed, Mr. Saul, nothing of that kind could have made a difference.”
“Will you grant me this;—that I may speak to you again on the same subject after six months?”
“It cannot do any good.”
“It will do this good;—that for so much time you will have had the idea before you.” Fanny thought that she would have Mr. Saul himself before her, and that that would be enough. Mr. Saul, with his rusty clothes and his thick, dirty shoes, and his weak, blinking eyes, and his mind always set upon the one wish of his life, could not be made to present himself to her in the guise of a lover. He was one of those men of whom women become very fond with the fondness of friendship, but from whom young women seem to be as far removed in the way of love as though they belonged to some other species. “I will not press you further,” said he, “as I gather by your tone that it distresses you.”
“I am so sorry if I distress you, but really, Mr. Saul, I could give you—I never could give you any other answer.”
Then they walked on silently through the rain—silently, without a single word—for more than half a mile, till they reached the rectory gate. Here it was necessary that
