“I am used to be out alone at this hour, and I entreat you not to do so.”
“I promise. I can bring myself to promise nothing more tonight, Lizzie, except that I will try what I can do.”
“There is but one means, Mr. Wrayburn, of sparing yourself and of sparing me, every way. Leave this neighbourhood tomorrow morning.”
“I will try.”
As he spoke the words in a grave voice, she put her hand in his, removed it, and went away by the riverside.
“Now, could Mortimer believe this?” murmured Eugene, still remaining, after a while, where she had left him. “Can I even believe it myself?”
He referred to the circumstance that there were tears upon his hand, as he stood covering his eyes. “A most ridiculous position this, to be found out in!” was his next thought. And his next struck its root in a little rising resentment against the cause of the tears.
“Yet I have gained a wonderful power over her, too, let her be as much in earnest as she will!”
The reflection brought back the yielding of her face and form as she had drooped under his gaze. Contemplating the reproduction, he seemed to see, for the second time, in the appeal and in the confession of weakness, a little fear.
“And she loves me. And so earnest a character must be very earnest in that passion. She cannot choose for herself to be strong in this fancy, wavering in that, and weak in the other. She must go through with her nature, as I must go through with mine. If mine exacts its pains and penalties all round, so must hers, I suppose.”
Pursuing the inquiry into his own nature, he thought, “Now, if I married her. If, outfacing the absurdity of the situation in correspondence with M.R.F., I astonished M.R.F. to the utmost extent of his respected powers, by informing him that I had married her, how would M.R.F. reason with the legal mind? ‘You wouldn’t marry for some money and some station, because you were frightfully likely to become bored. Are you less frightfully likely to become bored, marrying for no money and no station? Are you sure of yourself?’ Legal mind, in spite of forensic protestations, must secretly admit, ‘Good reasoning on the part of M.R.F. Not sure of myself.’ ”
In the very act of calling this tone of levity to his aid, he felt it to be profligate and worthless, and asserted her against it.
“And yet,” said Eugene, “I should like to see the fellow (Mortimer excepted) who would undertake to tell me that this was not a real sentiment on my part, won out of me by her beauty and her worth, in spite of myself, and that I would not be true to her. I should particularly like to see the fellow tonight who would tell me so, or who would tell me anything that could be construed to her disadvantage; for I am wearily out of sorts with one Wrayburn who cuts a sorry figure, and I would far rather be out of sorts with somebody else. ‘Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business.’ Ah! So go the Mortimer Lightwood bells, and they sound melancholy tonight.”
Strolling on, he thought of something else to take himself to task for. “Where is the analogy, Brute Beast,” he said impatiently, “between a woman whom your father coolly finds out for you and a woman whom you have found out for yourself, and have ever drifted after with more and more of constancy since you first set eyes upon her? Ass! Can you reason no better than that?”
But, again he subsided into a reminiscence of his first full knowledge of his power just now, and of her disclosure of her heart. To try no more to go away, and to try her again, was the reckless conclusion it turned uppermost. And yet again, “Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business!” And, “I wish I could stop the Lightwood peal, for it sounds like a knell.”
Looking above, he found that the young moon was up, and that the stars were beginning to shine in the sky from which the tones of red and yellow were flickering out, in favour of the calm blue of a summer night. He was still by the riverside. Turning suddenly, he met a man, so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped back, to avoid a collision. The man carried something over his shoulder which might have been a broken oar, or spar, or bar, and took no notice of him, but passed on.
“Halloa, friend!” said Eugene, calling after him, “are you blind?”
The man made no reply, but went his way.
Eugene Wrayburn went the opposite way, with his hands behind him and his purpose in his thoughts. He passed the sheep, and passed the gate, and came within hearing of the village sounds, and came to the bridge. The inn where he stayed, like the village and the mill, was not across the river, but on that side of the stream on which he walked. However, knowing the rushy bank and the backwater on the other side to be a retired place, and feeling out of humour for noise or company, he crossed the bridge, and sauntered on: looking up at the stars as they seemed one by one to be kindled in the sky, and looking down at the river as the same stars seemed to be kindled deep in the water. A landing-place overshadowed by a willow, and a pleasure-boat lying moored there among some stakes, caught his eye as he passed along. The spot was in such dark shadow, that he paused to make out what was there, and then passed on again.
The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections. He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream, and all tending one way
