Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds, Chapters I-IV [pp. 430-442]

MRS. GAINSBORO UGfH'S DIAMONDS.
"None of yours, I meant."
"I will call you'Tom,' if you please, on one
condition."
"What condition?"
"That you let it be'just this once.'"
"Kate, do you love me?"
"Oh, you are cruel!" she cried, with passionate
emphasis, slipping her hand from my arm, and fac ing me with glowing looks. "I wish I could say I
hate you! You are a man of the world, and I a
poor girl from a convent, who know nothing. I am
trying to do right, and you oppose me-you make it
hard and bitter to me. If you loved me as I-as I
would love if I were a man, you would not press me
so. I tell you, it must not be!"
"What is, shall be, Kate! Dear Kate, we love
each other, and who in the world shall prevent it, or
forbid our being married?"
"Hush! hush!" She came a step nearer to me,
and caught my sleeve with her little hand, as a timorous child might do, glancing nervously over her
shoulder as if something fearful were hidden among
the trees. "Did you hear nothing?" she whispered.
"Did not some one call me?"
"Only I have called you, dear. I called you
'Kate;' and now I want to call you'wife.'"
She continued to stand motionless, with that
frightened, listening expression still on her face; and
yet my words had apparently passed unheard. What
was it, then, that her ears were strained to catch?
To my sense, the forest was full of shadowy stillness,
tempered only by a faint whispering of leaves, and
now and then a bird-note high overhead.
Gradually the strange preoccupation left her.
Her breathing, which had been irregular and labored, now came evenly and gently once more. She
glanced sidelong at me for a moment; then, with a
swift, tender movement, she came yet a trifle closer,
and laid her other hand upon my arm.
"Tom-Tom, dear! I will say it, for we shall
be parted soon, and then, if I am alive, I shall be
comforted a little to think that I did say it. Listen
-Tom, dear, I love you! Never forget that I said
it-Tom, I love you."
I was taken deliciously by surprise. You must
not expect me to tell how I felt or what I said. I
can only remember that I took her in my arms and
kissed her. The bird that warbled over our heads
seemed to utter the ecstasy that I felt.
Presently we began to move on again. I don't know
why I didn't speak: perhaps I thought that our kiss
had been the seal of her surrender, and that therefore
words were for the moment impertinent. By-and-by
the converse would be renewed from a fresh basis.
Besides, my thoughts were flying too fast just then
for speech to overtake them. I was thinking how
singular had been the manner and progress of our acquaintance. It was scarcely in accordance with what
I believed to be my normal temperament and disposition to plunge so abruptly and almost recklessly
into a new order and responsibility of life. I had
fancied myself too cautious, too cool-headed, for such
an impulsive act. But it was done, and the fact that
Kate's feelings had responded to my own seemed to
justify the apparent risk. We were meant for each
other, and had come together in sheer despite of
all combinations of circumstances to keep us apart.
Knowing, as we did, scarcely anything of each other
as worldly knowledge goes, we had yet felt that in ward instinct and obligation to union which made
the most thoroughly worldly knowledge look like
folly. What would my mother say to it? How
would the news be relished by her father? I cared
not. I foresaw difficulties enough in store, but none
that appalled me. After all, an honorable man
and woman, honestly in love with each other, are a
match against the world, or superior to it. Union
is strength, and the union of loving hearts is the
strongest strength of all.
"And do you want to marry me, really, Tom?"
We had gained the summit of the steep hill, and
were now pacing along the ridge. The narrow,
winding valley lay sheer beneath us on the right,
with the white road and the dark stream lying side
by side at the bottom of it. The crest of the oppos ing hill-side seemed but a short stone's-throw dis tant; the aroma of our privacy was the sweeter for
the pygmy drosky, with its mannikin inmate, which
was crawling along through the dust so far below.
We commanded the world while we were ourselves
hidden from it.
"I should rather think I did, Kate!"
"I thought Englishmen only married as a matter
of business; that they married settlements, and dowries, and rank, and influence, and added women
merely as a matter of custom and politeness."
"I am satisfied to marry for love; if that's unEnglish-so much the better for me!"
"You would take me without anything but just
myself?"
"What is worth having compared with you?"
"0 Tom! But then you cannot have just myself alone. Nobody in the world is independent of
everything-not even an American-not even an
American girl who has lived seven years in a convent! I may not be able to bring you anything good
-anything that would make me more acceptable;
but what if I were to bring you something badsomething terrible-something that would make you
shudder at me if I were ten times as lovable is you
say I am?"
"Why, then, I should have to love you twenty
times more than ever, I suppose, that's all!" I answered, with a laugh.
"You don't mean what you say-at least, you
don't know what you say. You are not so brave as
you think you are, sir! What do you know of me?"
She spoke these sentences in a lower, graver tone
than the previous.ones, which had been uttered in a
vein of half-wayward, fanciful playfulness. Almost
immediately, however, she roused herself again, as
though unwilling to let the lightsome humor escape
so soon.
"Well, let us pretend that you have married me,
for better or worse, and that it is all settled. Now,
where will you take me to, first?"
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