‘You are surprised to see me here?’ he began, taking hold of the chair which Emily had risen from and swaying it backwards and forwards. Even his voice was more subdued than she had ever known it. ‘I have come to apologise to you for sending Miss Cartwright to meet her father at the station. I met her by chance just out there in the road, and as I wanted a messenger very badly I took advantage of her good-nature. But she wouldn’t go unless I promised to come here and explain her absence.’
‘Thank you,’ Emily replied, as naturally as she could. ‘Will she still come back for her lesson, do you think?’
‘I’m afraid not; she said I had better ask you to excuse her this morning.’
Emily gathered up two or three books which lay on the other chair.
‘You find her rather troublesome to teach, I should be afraid,’ Dagworthy pursued, watching her every moment. ‘Jessie isn’t much for study, is she?’
‘Perhaps she is a little absent now and then,’ replied Emily, saying the first thing that occurred to her.
She had collected her books and was about to fasten a strap round them.
‘Do let me do that for you,’ said Dagworthy, and he forestalled her assent, which she would probably not have given, by taking the books from her hands. He put up his foot on the chair, as if for the convenience of doing the strapping on his knee, but before he had finished it he spoke again.
‘You are fond of teaching, I suppose?’
‘Yes, I like it.’
She stood in expectant waiting, her hands held together before her, her head just bent. The attitude was grace itself. Dagworthy raised his eyes slowly from her feet to her face.
‘But you wouldn’t care to go on with it always?’
‘I—I don’t think about it,’ she replied, nervousness again seizing her. There was a new look in his eyes, a vehemence, a fervour, which she dared not meet after the first glance. He would not finish the strapping of the books, and she could not bid him do so. Had she obeyed her instinct, she would have hastened away, heedless of anything but the desire to quit his presence.
‘How long will your holidays be?’ he asked, letting the books fall to the chair, as if by accident.
‘Till the end of September, I think.’
‘So long? I’m glad to hear that. You will come again some day to my house with your father, won’t you?’
The words trembled upon his lips; it was not like his own voice, he could not control it.
‘Thank you, Mr. Dagworthy,’ she replied.
He bent to the books again, and this time succeeded in binding them together. As he fastened the buckle, drops of perspiration fell from his forehead.
Emily thanked him, and held forth her hand for the books. He took it in his own.
‘Miss Hood—’
She drew her hand away, almost by force, and retreated a step; his face terrified her.
‘I sent Jessie off on purpose,’ he continued. ‘I knew you were here, and wanted to speak to you alone. Since I met you that day on the Heath, I have had no rest—I’ve wanted so to see you again. The other morning at the Cartwrights’ it was almost more than I could do to go away. I don’t know what’s come to me; I can’t put you out of my thoughts for one minute; I can’t give my attention to business, to anything. I meant to have gone away before now, but I’ve put it off, day after day; once or twice I’ve all but come to your house, to ask to see you—’
He spoke in a hurried, breathless way, almost with violence; passion was forcing the words from him, in spite of a shame which kept his face on fire. There was something boyish in the simplicity of his phrases; he seemed to be making a confession that was compelled by fear, and at length his speech lost itself in incoherence. He stood with his eyes fixed on the ground; perspiration covered his face.
‘Mr. Dagworthy—’
Emily tried to break the intolerable silence. Her strength was answering now to the demand upon it; his utter abashment before her could not but help her to calmness. But the sound of her first word gave him voice again.
‘Let me speak first,’ he broke forth, now looking full at her. ‘That’s nothing of what I wanted to say; it sounds as if I wasn’t man enough to know my own mind. I know it well enough, and I must say all I have to say, whilst you’re here to listen to me. After all, you’re only a girl; but if you’d come here straight from heaven, I couldn’t find it harder to speak to you.’
‘Mr. Dagworthy, don’t speak like this—don’t say more—I beg you not to! I cannot listen as you would wish me to.’
‘You can’t listen? But you don’t know what I have to say still,’ he urged, with hasty entreaty, his voice softer. ‘I’m asking nothing yet; I only want you to know how you’ve made me feel towards you. No feeling will ever come to you like this that’s come to me, but I want you to know of it, to try and understand what it means—to try and think of me. I don’t ask for yes or no, it wouldn’t be reasonable; you haven’t had to think of me in this way. But God knows how I shall live without you; it would be the cruelest word woman ever said if you refused even to give me a hope.’
‘I cannot—do hear me—it is not in my power to give you hope.’
‘Oh, you say that because you think you must, because I have come to you so suddenly; I have offended you by talking in this way when we scarcely know each other even as friends, and you have to keep me at a distance; I see it on your face. Do you think there is a danger that I should be less respectful to you than I ought? That’s because you don’t understand me. I’ve spoken in rough, hasty words, because to be near you takes all sense from me. Look, I’m quieter now. What I ought to have said at first is this. You’re prejudiced against me; you’ve heard all sorts of tales; I know well enough what people say about me—well, I want you to know me better. We’ll leave all other feelings aside. We’ll say I just wish you to think of me in a just way, a friendly way, nothing more. It’s impossible for you to do more than that at first. No doubt even your father has told you that I have a hasty temper, which leads me to say and do things I’m soon sorry for. It’s true enough, but that doesn’t prove that I am a brute, and that I can’t mend myself. You’ve heard things laid to my charge that are false—about my doings in my own home—you know what I mean. Get to know me better, and some day I’ll tell you the whole truth. Now it’s only this I ask of you—be just to me. You’re not a woman like these in Dunfield who talk and talk behind one’s back; though I have seen so little of you, don’t I know the difference between you and them? I’m ignorant enough, compared with you, but I can feel what it is that puts you above all other women. It must be that that makes me mad to gain a kind word from you. One word—that you’ll try to think of me; and I’ll live on that as long as I can.’
The mere utterances help little to an understanding of the terrible force of entreaty he put into this speech. His face, his hands, the posture of his body, all joined in pleading. He had cast off all shamefacedness, and spoke as if his life depended on the answer she would return; the very lack of refinement in his tone, in his pronunciation of certain words, made his appeal the more pathetic. With the quickness of jealousy, he had guessed at the meaning there might lie in Emily’s reluctance to hear him, but he dared not entertain the thought; it was his passionate instinct to plead it down. Whatever it might be that she had in mind, she must first hear him. As he spoke, he watched her features with the eagerness of desire, of fear; to do so was but to inflame his passion. It was an extraordinary struggle between the force of violent appetite and the constraint of love in the higher sense. How the former had been excited, it would be hard to explain. Wilfrid Athel had submitted to the same influence. Her beauty was of the kind which, leaving the ordinary man untouched, addressed itself with the strangest potency to an especially vehement nature here and there. Her mind, uttering itself in the simplest phrases, laid a spell upon certain other minds set apart and chosen. She could not speak but the soul of this rude mill-owner was exalted beyond his own intelligence.