They are scouring the country - Miss Denison! Eva! My poor love!"She had broken down utterly in a second fit of violent weeping; and a second time I took her in my arms, and stood trying in my clumsy way to comfort her, as though she were a little child. A lamp was burning in the library, and I recognized the arm-chair which Rattray had drawn thence for me on the night of our dinner - the very night before! I led Eva back into the room, and I closed both doors. Isupported my poor girl to the chair, and once more I knelt before her and took her hands in mine. My great hour was come at last: surely a happy omen that it was also the hour before the dawn.
"Cry your fill, my darling," I whispered, with the tears in my own voice. "You shall never have anything more to cry for in this world!
God has been very good to us. He brought you to me, and me to you.
He has rescued us for each other. All our troubles are over; cry your fill; you will never have another chance so long as I live, if only you will let me live for you. Will you, Eva? Will you? Will you?"She drew her hands from mine, and sat upright in the chair, looking at me with round eyes; but mine were dim; astonishment was all that I could read in her look, and on I went headlong, with growing impetus and passion.
"I know I am not much, my darling; but you know I was not always what my luck, good and bad, has left me now, and you will make a new man of me so soon! Besides, God must mean it, or He would not have thrown us together amid such horrors, and brought us through them together still. And you have no one else to take care of you in the world! Won't you let me try, Eva? Say that you will!""Then - you - ove me?" she said slowly, in a low, awe-struck voice that might have told me my fate at once; but I was shaking all over in the intensity of my passion, and for the moment it was joy enough to be able at last to tell her all.
"Love you?" I echoed. "With every fibre of my being! With every atom of my heart and soul and body! I love you well enough to live to a hundred for you, or to die for you to-night!""Well enough to - give me up?" she whispered.
I felt as though a cold hand had checked my heart at its hottest, but I mastered myself sufficiently to face her question and to answer it as honestly as I might.
"Yes!" I cried; "well enough even to do that, if it was for your happiness; but I might be rather difficult to convince about that.""You are very strong and true," she murmured. "Yes, I can trust you as I have never trusted anybody else! But - how long have you been so foolish?" And she tried very hard to smile.
"Since I first saw you; but I only knew it on the night of the fire.
Till that night I resisted it like an idiot. Do you remember how we used to argue? I rebelled so against my love! I imagined that I had loved once already and once for all. But on the night of the fire Iknew that my love for you was different from all that had gone before or would ever come again. I gave in to it at last, and oh! the joy of giving in! I had fought against the greatest blessing of my life, and I never knew it till I had given up fighting. What did I care about the fire? I was never happier - until now! You sang through my heart like the wind through the rigging; my one fear was that Imight go to the bottom without telling you my love. When I asked to say a few last words to you on the poop, it was to tell you my love before we parted, that you might know I loved you whatever came.
I didn't do so, because you seemed so frightened, poor darling! Ihadn't it in my heart to add to your distress. So I left you without a word. But I fought the sea for days together simply to tell you what I couldn't die without telling you. When they picked me up, it was your name that brought back my senses after days of delirium. When I heard that you were dead, I longed to die myself.
And when I found you lived after all, the horror of your surroundings was nothing to be compared with the mere fact that you lived; that you were unhappy and in danger was my only grief, but it was nothing to the thought of your death; and that I had to wait twenty-four hours without coming to you drove me nearer to madness than ever Iwas on the hen-coop. That's how I love you, Eva," I concluded;"that's how I love and will love you, for ever and ever, no matter what happens."Those sweet gray eyes of hers had been fixed very steadily upon me all through this outburst; as I finished they filled with tears, and my poor love sat wringing her slender fingers, and upbraiding herself as though she were the most heartless coquette in the country.
"How wicked I am!" she moaned. "How ungrateful I must be! You offer me the unselfish love of a strong, brave man. I cannot take it. I have no love to give you in return.""But some day you may," I urged, quite happily in my ignorance.
"It will come. Oh, surely it will come, after all that we have gone through together!"She looked at me very steadily and kindly through her tears.
"It has come, in a way," said she; "but it is not your way, Mr. Cole.
I do love you for your bravery and your - love - but that will not quite do for either of us.""Why not?" I cried in an ecstasy. "My darling, it will do for me!
It is more than I dared to hope for; thank God, thank God, that you should care for me at all!"She shook her head.
"You do not understand," she whispered.
"I do. I do. You do not love me as you want to love.""As I could love -"
"And as you will! It will come. It will come. I'll bother you no more about it now. God knows I can afford to leave well alone! Iam only too happy - too thankful - as it is!"And indeed I rose to my feet every whit as joyful as though she had accepted me on the spot. At least she had not rejected me; nay, she confessed to loving me in a way. What more could a lover want? Yet there was a dejection in her drooping attitude which disconcerted me in the hour of my reward. And her eyes followed me with a kind of stony remorse which struck a chill to my bleeding heart.
