You couldn't help yourself. It would have been the same if I hadn't had sixpence."To his sharp scrutiny there seemed to flicker in her eyes a kind of answering gleam. Then she hastily averted her glance, and in this action too there was a warrant for his mounting confidence.
"The trouble has been," he declared, "that I've been too much afraid of you. I've thought that you were made of so much finer stuff than I am, that you mustn't be touched.
That was all a mistake. I see it right enough now.
You ARE finer than I am--God knows there's no dispute about that--but that's no reason why I should have hung up signs of 'Hands off!' all around you, and been frightened by them myself. I had the cheek to capture you and carry you off--and I ought to have had the pluck to make you love me afterward, and keep it up. And that's what I'm going to do!"To this declaration she offered no immediate reply, but continued to gaze with a vaguely meditative air upon the expanse of landscape spread below them.
He threw a hasty glance over the windows behind him, and then with assurance passed his arm round her waist.
He could not say that there was any responsive yielding to his embrace, but he did affirm to himself with new conviction, as he looked down upon the fair small head at his shoulder, with its lovely pale-brown hair drawn softly over the temples, and its glimpse of the matchless profile inclined beneath--that it was all right.
He waited for a long time, with a joyous patience, for her to speak. The mere fact that she stood beneath his engirdling arm, and gave no thought to the potential servants'-eyes behind them, was enough for present happiness.
He regarded the illimitable picture commanded from his terrace with refreshed eyes; it was once again the finest view in England--and something much more than that beside.
At last, abruptly, she laughed aloud--a silvery, amused little laugh under her breath. "How comedy and tragedy tread forever on each other's heels!" she remarked.
Her tone was philosophically gay, but upon reflection he did not wholly like her words.
"There wasn't any tragedy," he said, "and there isn't any comedy."She laughed again. "Oh, don't say that this doesn't appeal to your sense of humour!" she urged, with mock fervour.
Thorpe sighed in such unaffected depression at this, that she seemed touched by his mood. Without stirring from his hold, she lifted her face. "Don't think I'm hateful,"she bade him, and her eyes were very kind. "There's more truth in what you've been saying than even you imagine.
It really wasn't the money--or I mean it might easily have been the same if there had been no money. But how shall Iexplain it? I am attracted by a big, bold, strong pirate, let us say, but as soon as he has carried me off--that is the phrase for it--then he straightway renounces crime and becomes a law-abiding, peaceful citizen.
My buccaneer transforms himself, under my very eyes, into an alderman! Do you say there is no comedy in that--and tragedy too?""Oh, put it that way and it's all right," he declared, after a moment's consideration. "I've got as much fun in me as anybody else," he went on, "only your jokes have a way of raising blisters on me, somehow. But that's all done with now. That's because I didn't know you--was frightened of you. But I aint scared any more.
Everything is different!"
With a certain graciousness of lingering movement, she withdrew herself from his clasp, and faced him with a doubtful smile. "Ah, don't be too sure," she murmured.
"Everything is different!" he repeated, with confident emphasis.
"Don't you see yourself it is?"
"You say it is," she replied, hesitatingly, "but that alone doesn't make it so. The assertion that life isn't empty doesn't fill it.""Ah, but NOW you will talk with me about all that,"he broke in triumphantly. "We've been standing off with one another. We've been of no help to each other. But we'll change that, now. We'll talk over everything together.
We'll make up our minds exactly what we want to do, and then I'll tuck you under my arm and we'll set out and do it."She smiled with kindly tolerance for his new-born enthusiasm.
"Don't count on me for too much wisdom or invention,"she warned him. "If things are to be done, you are still the one who will have to do them. But undoubtedly you are at your best when you are doing things. This really has been no sort of life for you, here."He gathered her arm into his. "Come and show me your greenhouses,"he said, and began walking toward the end of the terrace.
"It'll turn out to have been all right for me, this year that I've spent here," he continued, as they strolled along.
There was a delightful consciousness of new intimacy conveyed by the very touch of her arm, which filled his tone with buoyancy. "I've been learning all sorts of tricks here, and getting myself into your ways of life. It's all been good training. In every way I'm a better man than I was."They had descended from the terrace to a garden path, and approached now a long glass structure, through the panes of which masses of soft colour--whites, yellows, pinks, mauves, and strange dull reds--were dimly perceptible.
"The chrysanthemums are not up to much this year,"Edith observed, as they drew near to the door of this house.
"Collins did them very badly--as he did most other things.
But next year it will be very different. Gafferson is the best chrysanthemum man in England. That is he in there now, I think."Thorpe stopped short, and stared at her, the while the suggestions stirred by the sound of this name slowly shaped themselves.
"Gafferson?" he asked her, with a blank countenance.
"My new head-gardener," she explained. "He was at Hadlow, and after poor old Lady Plowden died--why, surely you remember him there. You spoke about him--you'd known him somewhere--in the West Indies, wasn't it?"He looked into vacancy with the aspect of one stupefied.
"Did I?" he mumbled automatically.
Then, with sudden decision, he swung round on the gravel.
"I've got a kind of headache coming on," he said. "If you don't mind, we won't go inside among the flowers."
