SPEID stood at the corner of a field, in the place from which he had looked up the river with Barclay on the day of his arrival. His steps were now often turned in that direction, for the line of the Morphie woods acted as a magnet to his gaze. Since the day he had spoken so freely to Granny Stirk he had not once met Cecilia, and he was weary. It was since he had last seen her that he had discovered his own heart.
Away where the Lour lost itself in the rich land, was the casket that held the jewel he coveted. He put his hand up to his cheek-bone. He was glad that he would carry that scar on it to his death, for it was an eternal reminder of the night when he had first beheld her under the branches, as they walked in the torchlight to Morphie House. He had not been able to examine her face till it looked into his own in the mirror as she put the plaster on his cheek. That was a moment which he had gone over, again and again, in his mind. It is one of the strangest things in life that we do not recognise its turning-points till we have passed them.
The white cottage which Barclay had pointed out to him as the march of his own property was a light spot in the afternoon sunshine, and the shadows were creeping from under the high wooded banks across the river’s bed. Beyond it the Morphie water began. By reason of the wide curves made by the road, the way to Morphie House was longer on the turnpike than by the path at the water-side. He crossed the fence and went down to the Lour, striking it just above the bridge. To follow its bank up to those woods would bring him nearer to her, even if he could not see her. It was some weeks since he had been to Morphie, and he had not arrived at such terms with Lady Eliza as should, to his mind, warrant his going there uninvited. Many and many times he had thought of writing to Cecilia and ending the strain of suspense in which he lived, once and for all; but he had lacked courage, and he was afraid; afraid of what his own state of mind would be when he had sent the letter and was awaiting its answer. How could he convince her of all he felt in a letter? He could not risk it.
He looked round at the great, eight-spanned bridge which carried the road high over his head, and down, between the arches, to the ribbon of water winding out to sea; to the cliffs above that grave lying in the corner of the kirkyard-wall; to the beeches of Whanland covering the bank a hundred yards from where he stood. He had come to love them all. All that had seemed uncouth, uncongenial to him, had fallen into its place, and an affinity with the woods and the wide fields, with the grey sea-line and the sand-hills, had entered into him. He had thought to miss the glory of the South when he left Spain, months ago, but now he cared no more for Spain. This misty angle of the East Coast, conveying nothing to the casual eye in search of more obvious beauty, had laid its iron hand on him, as it will lay it on all sojourners, and blinded him to everything but its enduring and melancholy charm. There are many, since Gilbert’s day, who have come to the country in which he lived and loved and wandered, driven by some outside circumstance and bewailing their heavy fate, who have asked nothing better than to die in it. And now, for him, from this mist of association, from this atmosphere of spirit-haunted land and sea, had risen the star of life.
He crossed the march of Whanland by green places where cattle stood flicking the flies, and went onwards, admiring the swaying heads of mauve scabious and the tall, cream-pink valerian that brushed him as he passed. He did not so much as know their names, but he knew that the world grew more beautiful with each step that brought him nearer to Morphie.
The sun was beginning to decline as he stood half a mile below the house, and the woods were dark above his head. A few moss-covered boulders lay in the path and the alders which grew, with their roots almost in the water, seemed to have stepped ashore to form a thicket through which his way ran. The twigs touched his face as he pushed through them.
On the further side stood Cecilia, a few paces in front of him, at the edge of the river. She had heard the footsteps, and was looking straight at him as he emerged. At the sight of her face he knew, as surely as if he had been told it, that she was thinking of him.
They stood side by side in a pregnant silence through which that third voice, present with every pair of lovers who meet alone, cried aloud to both.
‘I did not expect to see you here, sir,’ she began.
(‘He has come because he cannot keep away; he has come because the very sight of the trees that surround your home have a glamour for him; because there is no peace any more for him, day nor night,’ said the voice to her.)
(‘She has come here to think of you, to calm her heart, to tell herself that you are not, and never can be, anything to her, and then to contradict her own words,’ it cried to him.)
He could not reply; the third voice was too loud.
‘Let us go on a little way,’ said Cecilia.
Her lips would scarcely move, and the voice and the beating of her heart was stopping her breath.
Gilbert turned, and they went through the alders, he holding back the twigs for her to pass.
(‘He loves you! he loves you! he loves you!’ cried the voice.)
As she brushed past him through the narrow way her nearness seemed to make the scar on his face throb, and bring again to him the thrill of her fingers upon his cheek. He could bear it no more. They were at the end of the thicket, and, as she stepped out of it in front of him, he sprang after her, catching her in his arms.
‘Cecilia!’ he said, almost in a whisper.
He had grown white.
She drew herself away with an impulse which her womanhood made natural. He followed her fiercely, on his face the set look of a man in a trance.
There are some things in a woman stronger than training, stronger than anything that may have hedged her in from her birth, and they await but the striking of an hour and the touch of one man. As he stretched out his arms anew she turned towards him and threw herself into them. Their lips met, again—again. He held her close in silence.
‘Ah, I am happy,’ she exclaimed at last.
‘And I have been afraid to tell you, torturing myself to think that you would repulse me. Cecilia, you understand what you are saying—you will never repent this?’
‘Never,’ she said. ‘I shall love you all my life.’
He touched the dark hair that rested against his shoulder.
‘I am not worthy of it,’ he said. ‘My only claim to you is that I adore you. I cannot think why the whole world is not in love with you.’
She laughed softly.
‘I have been half mad,’ he went on, ‘but I am cured now. I can do nothing by halves, Cecilia.’
‘I hope you may never love me by halves.’
‘Say Gilbert.’
‘Gilbert.’
‘How perfect it sounds on your lips! I never thought of admiring my name before.’
‘Gilbert Speid,’ repeated she. ‘It is beautiful.’
‘Cecilia Speid is better,’ he whispered.
She disengaged herself gently, and stood looking over the water. The shadow lay across it and halfway up the opposite bank. He watched her.
‘I have lived more than thirty years without you,’ he said. ‘I cannot wait long.’
She made no reply.
‘We must speak to my aunt,’ she said, after a pause. ‘We cannot tell what she may think. At least, I shall not be going far from her.’
‘I cannot offer you what many others might,’ said he, coming closer. ‘I am not a rich man. But, thank God, I can give you everything you have had at Morphie. Nothing is good enough for you, Cecilia; but you shall come first in everything. You know that.’
‘If you were a beggar, I would marry you,’ she said.
Honesty, in those days, was not supposed to be a lady’s accomplishment, but, to Cecilia, this moment, the most sacred she had ever known, was not one for concealment of what lay in the very depths of truth. She had been unconscious of it at the time, but she now knew that that first moment at the dovecot had sealed the fate of her heart. Looking back, she wondered why she had not understood.
‘May God punish me if I do not make you happy,’ said Gilbert, his eyes set upon her. ‘A woman is beyond my understanding. How can you risk so much for a man like me? How can you know that you are not spoiling your life?’
‘I think I have always known,’ said she.
He stood, neither speaking nor approaching her. The miracle of her love was too great for him to grasp. In spite of the gallant personality he carried through life, in spite of the glory of his youth and strength, he was humble-hearted, and, before this woman, he felt himself less than the dust. In the old life in Spain which had slipped from him he had been the prominent figure of the circle in which he lived. His men friends had admired and envied him, and, to the younger ones, Gilbert Speid, who kept so much to himself, who looked so quiet and could do so many things better than they, was a model which they were inclined to copy. To women, the paradox of his personal attraction and irregular face, and the fact that he only occasionally cared to profit by his own advantages, made him consistently interesting. He had left all that and come to a world which took little heed of him, to find in it this peerless thing of snow and flame, of truth and full womanhood, and she was giving her life and herself into his hand. He was shaken through and through by the charm of her eyes, her hands, her hair, her slim whiteness, the movements of her figure, the detachment which made approach so intoxicating. He could have knelt down on the river-bank.
The sun had gone from the sky when the two parted and Cecilia went up through the trees to Morphie. He left her at the edge of the woods, standing to watch her out of sight. Above his head the heavens were transfigured by the evening, and two golden wings were spread like a fan across the west. The heart in his breast was transfigured too. As he neared Whanland and looked at the white walls of the palace that was to contain his queen, the significance of what had happened struck him afresh. She would be there, in these rooms, going in and out of these doors; her voice and her step would be on the stair, in the hall. He entered in and sat down, his elbows on the table, his face hidden in his hands, and the tears came into his eyes.
When the lights were lit, and Macquean’s interminable comings-in and goings-out on various pretexts were over, he gave himself up to his dreams of the coming time. In his mind he turned the house upside down. She liked windows that looked westward; he would go out of his own room, which faced that point, and make it into a boudoir for her. She liked jessamine, and jessamine should clothe every gate and wall. She had once admired some French tapestry, and he would ruin himself in tapestry. She should have everything that her heart or taste could desire.
He would buy her a horse the like of which had never been seen in the country, and he would go to England to choose him; to London, to the large provincial sales and fairs, until he should come upon the animal he had in his mind. He must have a mouth like velvet, matchless manners and paces, the temper of an angel, perfect beauty. He thought of a liver-chestnut, mottled on the flank, with burnished gold hidden in the shades of his coat. But that would not do. Chestnuts, children of the sun, were hot, and he shivered at the bare idea of risking her precious body on the back of some creature all nerves and sudden terrors and caprices. He would not have a chestnut. He lost himself in contemplation of a review of imaginary horses.
She must have jewels, too. He had passed them over in his dreams, and he remembered, with vivid pleasure, that he need not wait to gratify his eyes with the sight of something fit to offer her. In a room near the cellar was a strong box which Barclay had delivered to him on his arrival, and which had lain at Mr. Speid’s bankers all the years of his life in Spain. He had never opened it, although he kept the key in the desk at his elbow, but he knew that it contained jewels which had belonged to his mother. He sprang up and rang for a light; then, with the key in his hand, he went down to the basement, carried up the box, and set it on the table before him.
He found that it was made in two divisions, the upper being a shelf in which all kinds of small things and a few rings were lying; the lower part was full of cases, some wooden and some made of faded leather. He opened the largest and discovered a necklace, each link of which was a pink topaz set in diamonds. The stones were clear set, for the artificer had not foiled them at the back, as so many of his trade were apt to do, and the light flowed through them like sunlight through roses. Gilbert was pleased, and laid it again in its leather case feeling that this, his first discovery, was fit even for Cecilia.
The next thing that he opened was a polished oval wooden box, tied round and round with a piece of embroidery silk, and having a painted wreath of laurel-leaves encircling the ‘C. L.’ on the top of the lid. It was a pretty, dainty little object, pre-eminently a woman’s intimate property; a little thing which might lie on a dressing-table among laces and fans, or be found tossed into the recesses of some frivolous, scented cushion close to its owner. It did not look as though made to hold jewels. Inside lay the finest and thinnest of gold chains, long enough to go round a slender throat, and made with no clasp nor fastening. It was evidently intended to be crossed over and knotted in front, with the ends left hanging down, for each terminated in a pear-shaped stone—one an emerald set in diamonds, and one a diamond set in emeralds. The exquisite thing charmed him, and he sat looking at it, and turning it this way and that to catch the light. He loved emeralds, because they reminded him of the little brooch he had often seen on Cecilia’s bosom. It should be his first gift to her.
He next came upon the shagreen case containing the pearl necklace which Mr. Speid had carried with him when he went to fetch his bride, and which had adorned his mother’s neck as she drove up in the family chariot to Whanland. He did not know its history, but he admired the pearls and their perfect uniformity and shape, and he pictured Cecilia wearing them. He would have her painted in them.
Instinctively he glanced up to the wall where Clementina Speid’s portrait hung. By his orders it had been taken from the garret, cleaned, and brought down to the room in which he generally sat. She had always fascinated him, and the discovery of her brilliant, wayward face hidden in the dust, put away like a forgotten thing in gloom and oblivion, had produced an unfading impression on his mind. What a contrast between her smiling lips, her dancing eyes, her mass of curling chestnut hair, and the forlorn isolation of her grave on the shore with the remorseless inscription chosen for it by the man he remembered! Those words were not meant to apply to her, but to him who had laid her there. Gilbert had no right to think of her as aught but an evil thing, but, for all that, he could not judge her. Surely, surely, she had been judged.
And this was her little box, her own private, intimate little toy, for a toy it was, with its tiny, finely-finished wreath of laurel, and its interlaced gilt monogram in the centre. He took the candle and went up close to the wall to look at her. The rings he had found in the jewel-box were so small that he wondered if the painted fingers corresponded to their size. The picture hung rather high, and though he was tall, he could not clearly see the hands, which were in shadow. He brought a chair and stood upon it, holding the light. The portrait had been cleaned and put up while he was absent for a few days from Whanland, and he had not examined it closely since that time. Yes, the fingers were very slender, and they were clasped round a small, dark object. He pulled out his silk handkerchief and rubbed the canvas carefully. What she held was the laurel-wreathed box.
He took it up from the table again with an added interest, for he had made sure that she prized it, and it pleased him to find he was right. On the great day on which he should bring Cecilia to Whanland he would show her what he had discovered.
He replaced all the other cases and boxes, locking them up, but the painted one with the emerald and diamond drops inside it he put into a drawer of his desk—he would need it so soon. As he laid it away there flashed across him the question of whether Cecilia knew his history. It had never occurred to him before. He sat down on the edge of his writing-table, looking into space. In his intoxication he had not remembered that little cloud in the background of his life.
That it would make any difference to Cecilia’s feelings for him he did not insult her by supposing, but how would it affect Lady Eliza? Like a breath of poison came the thought that it might influence her approval of the marriage. He needed but to look back to be certain that the shadow over his birth was a dark one. Whether the outer world were aware of it he did not know.
Any knowledge which had reached the ears of the neighbourhood could only have been carried by the gossip of servants, and officially, there was no stain resting upon him. He had been acknowledged as a son by the man whom he had called father, he had inherited his property, he had been received in the county as the representative of the family whose name he bore. Lady Eliza herself had accepted him under it, and invited him to her house. For all he knew, she might never have heard anything about the matter. But, whether she had, or whether she had not, it was his plain duty, as an honourable man, to put the case before her, and when he went to Morphie to ask formally for Cecilia he would do it.
But he could not believe that it would really go against him. From Lady Eliza’s point of view, there was so much in his favour. She need scarcely part with the girl who was to her as her own child. Besides which, the idea was too hideous.