Cecilia's features hung on an expression equivalent to:--I could almost do that.'

At the same time she felt it was not Seymour Austin's manner of speaking. He seemed to be praising an unknown person--some gentleman who was rough, but of solid promise and singular strength of character.

The house-bell rang. Believing that Beauchamp had now come, she showed a painful ridging of the brows, and Mr. Austin considerately mentioned the name of the person he had in his mind.

She readily agreed with him regarding Mr. Tuckham's excellent qualities--if that was indeed the name; and she hastened to recollect how little she had forgotten Mr. Tuckham's generosity to Beauchamp, and confessed to herself it might as well have been forgotten utterly for the thanks he had received. While revolving these ideas she was listening to Mr. Austin; gradually she was beginning to understand that she was parting company with her original conjectures, but going at so swift a pace in so supple and sure a grasp, that, like the speeding train slipped on new lines of rails by the pointsman, her hurrying sensibility was not shocked, or the shock was imperceptible, when she heard him proposing Mr. Tuckham to her for a husband, by her father's authority, and with his own warm seconding. He had not dropped her hand: he was very eloquent, a masterly advocate: he pleaded her father's cause; it was not put to her as Mr. Tuckham's: her father had set his heart on this union he was awaiting her decision.

'Is it so urgent?' she asked.

'It is urgent. It saves him from an annoyance. He requires a son-in-law whom he can confidently rely on to manage the estates, which you are woman of the world enough to know should be in strong hands. He gives you to a man of settled principles. It is urgent, because he may wish to be armed with your answer at any instant.'

Her father entered the library. He embraced her, and 'Well?' he said.

'I must think, papa, I must think.'

She pressed her hand across her eyes. Disillusioned by Seymour Austin, she was utterly defenceless before Beauchamp: and possibly Beauchamp was in the house. She fancied he was, by the impatient brevity of her father's voice.

Seymour Austin and Colonel Halkett left the room, and Blackburn Tuckham walked in, not the most entirely self-possessed of suitors, puffing softly under his breath, and blinking eyes as rapidly as a skylark claps wings on the ascent.

Half an hour later Beauchamp appeared. He asked to see the colonel, delivered himself of his pretensions and wishes to the colonel, and was referred to Cecilia; but Colonel Halkett declined to send for her.

Beauchamp declined to postpone his proposal until the following day. He went outside the house and walked up and down the gra.s.s-plot.

Cecilia came to him at last.

'I hear, Nevil, that you are waiting to speak to me.'

'I've been waiting some weeks. Shall I speak here?'

'Yes, here, quickly.'

'Before the house? I have come to ask you for your hand.'

'Mine? I cannot...'

'Step into the park with me. I ask you to marry me.'

'It is too late.'

CHAPTER XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM

Pa.s.sing from one scene of excitement to another, Cecilia was perfectly steeled for her bitter task; and having done that which separated her a sphere's distance from Beauchamp, she was cold, inaccessible to the face of him who had swayed her on flood and ebb so long, incapable of tender pity, even for herself. All she could feel was a harsh joy to have struck off her tyrant's fetters, with a determination to cherish it pa.s.sionately lest she should presently be hating herself: for the shadow of such a possibility fell within the narrow circle of her strung sensations. But for the moment her delusion reached to the idea that she had escaped from him into freedom, when she said, 'It is too late.'

Those words were the sum and voice of her long term of endurance. She said them hurriedly, almost in a whisper, in the manner of one changeing a theme of conversation for subjects happier and livelier, though none followed.

The silence bore back on her a suspicion of a faint reproachfulness in the words; and perhaps they carried a poetical tone, still more distasteful.

'You have been listening to tales of me,' said Beauchamp.

'Nevil, we can always be friends, the best of friends.'

'Were you astonished at my asking you for your hand? You said "mine?" as if you wondered. You have known my feelings for you. Can you deny that?

I have reckoned on yours--too long?--But not falsely? No, hear me out.

The truth is, I cannot lose you. And don't look so resolute. Overlook little wounds: I was never indifferent to you. How could I be--with eyes in my head? The colonel is opposed to me of course: he will learn to understand me better: but you and I! we cannot be mere friends. It's like daylight blotted out--or the eyes gone blind:--Too late? Can you repeat it? I tried to warn you before you left England: I should have written a letter to put you on your guard against my enemies:--I find I have some: but a letter is sure to stumble; I should have been obliged to tell you that I do not stand on my defence; and I thought I should see you the next day. You went: and not a word for me! You gave me no chance. If you have no confidence in me I must bear it. I may say the story is false. With your hand in mine I would swear it.'

'Let it be forgotten,' said Cecilia, surprised and shaken to think that her situation required further explanations; fascinated and unnerved by simply hearing him. 'We are now--we are walking away from the house.'

'Do you object to a walk with me?'

They had crossed the garden plot and were at the gate of the park leading to the Western wood. Beauchamp swung the gate open. He cast a look at the clouds coming up from the South-west in folds of grey and silver.

'Like the day of our drive into Bevisham!--without the storm behind,'

he said, and doated on her soft shut lips, and the mild sun-rays of her hair in sunless light. 'There are flowers that grow only in certain valleys, and your home is Mount Laurels, whatever your fancy may be for Italy. You colour the whole region for me. When you were absent, you were here. I called here six times, and walked and talked with you.'

Cecilia set her face to the garden. Her heart had entered on a course of heavy thumping, like a sapper in the mine.

Pain was not unwelcome to her, but this threatened weakness.

What plain words could she use? If Mr. Tuckham had been away from the house, she would have found it easier to speak of her engagement; she knew not why. Or if the imperative communication could have been delivered in Italian or French, she was as little able to say why it should have slipped from her tongue without a critic shudder to arrest it. She was cold enough to revolve the words: betrothed, affianced, plighted: and reject them, pretty words as they are. Between the vulgarity of romantic language, and the baldness of commonplace, it seemed to her that our English gives us no choice; that we cannot be dignified in simplicity. And for some reason, feminine and remote, she now detested her 'hand' so much as to be unable to bring herself to the metonymic mention of it. The lady's difficulty was peculiar to sweet natures that have no great warmth of pa.s.sion; it can only be indicated.

Like others of the kind, it is traceable to the most delicate of sentiments, and to the flattest:--for Mr. Blackburn's Tuckham's figure was (she thought of it with no personal objection) not of the graceful order, neither cavalierly nor kingly: and imagining himself to say, 'I am engaged,' and he suddenly appearing on the field, Cecilia's whole mind was shocked in so marked a way did he contrast with Beauchamp.

This was the effect of Beauchamp's latest words on her. He had disarmed her anger.

'We must have a walk to-day,' he said commandingly, but it had stolen into him that he and she were not walking on the same bank of the river, though they were side by side: a chill water ran between them. As in other days, there hung her hand: but not to be taken. Incredible as it was, the icy sense of his having lost her benumbed him. Her beautiful face and beautiful tall figure, so familiar to him that they were like a possession, protested in his favour while they s.n.a.t.c.hed her from him all the distance of the words 'too late.'

'Will you not give me one half-hour?'

'I am engaged,' Cecilia plunged and extricated herself, 'I am engaged to walk with Mr. Austin and papa.'

Beauchamp tossed his head. Something induced him to speak of Mr.

Tuckham. 'The colonel has discovered his Tory young man! It's an object as incomprehensible to me as a Tory working-man. I suppose I must take it that they exist. As for Blackburn Tuckham, I have nothing against him. He's an honourable fellow enough, and would govern Great Britain as men of that rich middle-cla.s.s rule their wives--with a strict regard for ostensible humanity and what the law allows them. His manners have improved. Your cousin Mary seems to like him: it struck me when I saw them together. Cecilia! one half-hour! You refuse me: you have not heard me. You will not say too late.'

'Nevil, I have said it finally. I have no longer the right to conceive it unsaid.'

'So we speak! It's the language of indolence, temper, faint hearts.

"Too late" has no meaning. Turn back with me to the park. I offer you my whole heart; I love you. There's no woman living who could be to me the wife you would be. I'm like your male nightingale that you told me of: I must have my mate to sing to--that is, work for and live for; and she must not delay too long. Did I? Pardon me if you think I did. You have known I love you. I have been distracted by things that kept me from thinking of myself and my wishes: and love's a selfish business while...

while one has work in hand. It's clear I can't do two things at a time--make love and carry on my taskwork. I have been idle for weeks.

I believed you were mine and wanted no lovemaking. There's no folly in that, if you understand me at all. As for vanity about women, I 've outlived it. In comparison with you I'm poor, I know:--you look distressed, but one has to allude to it:--I admit that wealth would help me. To see wealth supporting the cause of the people for once would--but you say, too late! Well, I don't renounce you till I see you giving your hand to a man who's not myself. You have been offended: groundlessly, on my honour! You are the woman of all women in the world to hold me fast in faith and pride in you. It's useless to look icy: you feel what I say.'

'Nevil, I feel grief, and beg you to cease. I am----It is-----'

'"Too late" has not a rag of meaning, Cecilia! I love your name. I love this too: this is mine, and no one can rob me of it.'

He drew forth a golden locket and showed her a curl of her hair.

Crimsoning, she said instantly: 'Language of the kind I used is open to misconstruction, I fear. I have not even the right to listen to you. I am ... You ask me for what I have it no longer in my power to give. I am engaged.'

The shot rang through him and partly stunned him; but incredulity made a mocking effort to sustain him. The greater wounds do not immediately convince us of our fate, though we may be conscious that we have been hit.