“Do you remember the legend of the blue flower of happiness which grows upon the mountain peak, and is said to fade and wither in the lower air?” asked Vansittart, close at his fiancée’s ear. “We have found the blue flower on the hilltop, Eve. God grant that for us the heaven-born blossom will keep its bloom even on the dull level of daily life.”
“Will our life be dull?” she questioned, in her shy sweet voice, as if she scarcely dared speak of her love louder than in a whisper. “I don’t think I can ever find life dull so long as you really care for me.”
“No, Eve, life shall not be dull. It shall be as bright and varied, and as full of change and gladness, as devoted love can make it. Your youth has not been free from care, dearest; and you have missed many of the pleasures which girls of your age demand as a right. But the arrears shall be made up. There shall be full measure of gladness in your married life, if I can make you glad. I am not what the modern world calls a rich man; but I am very far from poverty. I have enough for all the real pleasures of life—for travel, and books, and music, and the drama, and gracious surroundings, and kindly charities. The sting of narrow means can never touch my wife.”
“It can be a very sharp sting sometimes,” said Eve; and then, dropping again into that shy undertone, “But if you were ever so poor, and if you were a working man, and we had to live in that cottage under the beech tree, squatters, with only a key-holding, I think I could be perfectly happy.”
“Ah, that is what love always thinks, while the blue flower blooms; but when that mystic flower begins to fade there is some virtue in pleasant surroundings. Years hence, when you begin to be tired of me, and the blue flower takes a greyish shade, why, we can change the scene of our lives, wander far away, and in a new world I shall seem almost a new lover.”
“Will you ever take me to Italy?” she asked. “Italy has been the dream of my life, but I never thought it would be realized.”
“Ah, that is just a girl’s fancy, fed by old-fashioned poets—Byron, for instance. The Italy of today is very disappointing, and just like everywhere else.”
“Oh, Mr. Vansittart!”
“Mr.!” he echoed. “Henceforward I am John, or Jack; very soon, my husband. Never again Mr., except in your letters to tradespeople or your orders to servants.”
“Am I really to call you Jack?”
“Really. It is the name by which I best know myself. But if you think it is too vulgar—”
“Vulgar; it is a lovely name. Jack! Jack!”
She repeated the monosyllable as if it were a sound of exquisite music, a sound on which to dwell lingeringly and lovingly for its very sweetness. To Vansittart also the name was sweet, spoken by those lips.
Colonel Marchant received Mr. Vansittart’s offer for his eldest daughter politely, but with no excess of cordiality. He had set his hope upon a richer marriage, had encouraged Sefton’s visit to the Homestead, with the idea that he would eventually propose to Eve. He might not mean matrimony in the first instance, perhaps, though he obviously admired the young lady, but he would be led on and caught before he was aware. Colonel Marchant had implicit faith in his daughter’s power to ward off any evil purpose of her admirer; and although he knew Sefton’s character well enough to know that he would not willingly marry a penniless girl, he trusted to the power of Eve’s beauty and personal charm to bring him to the right frame of mind.
He was too shrewd a campaigner, however, to refuse the humble sparrow in the hand for the goldfinch in the bush. Sefton had been dangling about the family for nearly two years, and had scrupulously abstained from any serious declaration; and here was a young man of good birth and breeding, with a very fair estate, who between January and April had made up his mind in the manliest fashion, and was willing to take Eve for his wife without a sixpence, and to settle three hundred a year upon her for pin-money. Vansittart had offered himself in a frank and businesslike manner, had declared the amount of his income, and his anxiety to marry as soon as possible.
“We have nothing in this world to wait for,” he said.
“Except a young lady’s caprice,” answered the Colonel. “Eve will be too happy in the pleasures of courtship to be anxious for the final step. And then there will be her trousseau to prepare. That will take time.”
“My mother can help her in all those details,” said Vansittart, thinking that in all probability his mother would have to pay for as well as to choose the wedding finery. “We can take all that trouble off your hands, Colonel Marchant.”
He wrote to his mother on Sunday night, when his sister’s household and guests were hushed in their first sleep; wrote at fullest length, dwelling fondly upon the graces and perfections of her whom he had chosen.
“She will love you dearly, if you will let her,” he wrote; “she will be to you as a second daughter—nearer to you, perhaps, than Maud can now be; for, if you will have it so, our lives may be spent mostly together, in a triple bond of love. I know not what your inclination may be, but for my own part I see no reason why we should not live as one household. Merewood is large enough for a much larger family than ours could be for years to come. Eve has been so long motherless that she would the more
