‘Am I nothing more than a frivolous woman now?’ she said, leaning to him from the carriage.
Wilfrid could make no answer, and she was whirled away from him.
He went to her the next day, and asked her to be his wife. Beatrice looked him in the face long and steadily. Then she asked:
‘Do you love me, Wilfrid?’
‘I love you.’
Another word trembled on her tongue, but the temptation of her bliss was too great; the contained ardour of long years had its way, sweeping doubt and memory before it.
‘For your sake I have done it all. What do I care for a whole world’s praise, compared with one word of recognition from you! You remember the morning when you told me of my faults, when we all but seemed to quarrel? Ah! I have faults in abundance still, but have I not done one thing worth doing, done it thoroughly, as net everyone could? I am not only a woman of the world, of society and fashion? Do I not know how contemptible that is? But only you could raise me above it.’
He left her, in a bewildered state; she had excited, impassioned him; but how strange it all was after those other scenes of love! It seemed so of the earth; the words he had spoken rang over again in his ears, and stirred his blood to shame. He could not say whether in truth he loved her or not; was it enough to feel that he could cherish her with much tenderness, and intoxicate himself in gazing on her perfect face? Women are so different! Emily had scarcely spoken when he made known to her his love; could he ever forget that awe-struck face, dimly seen in the moonlight? Her words to the end had been few; it was her eyes that spoke. Beatrice was noble, and had a heart of gold; was there not heaven in that ardour of hers, if only it had been his soul’s desire? Henceforth it must be; she loved him, and he must not wrong her. Alas! the old name, the old name alone, was still star-written….
He passed with her the afternoon of each Sunday. Mrs. Birks’ house was a large one, and Beatrice had abundance of room to herself. Thither Wilfrid took his way on the Sunday which we have reached, the day following his drawing-room triumph. Already he was a little ashamed of himself; he was experiencing again the feeling which had come over him after his first speech to a political meeting. As he went home that night, a demon in his head kept crying ‘Clap-trap! clap-trap!’ and there was no silencing the voice. He had talked to the intelligence of the mob. Now his talk had been addressed to—the representatives of the mob; if the demon did not cry so loudly, it was only because he was weary of his thankless task.
Beatrice was a superb coquette—but only for the man she loved. For these Sunday afternoons she attired herself divinely; Wilfrid had learnt to expect a new marvel at each of his comings. To-day she wore her favourite colour, a dark-blue. Her rising to meet him was that of a queen who bath an honoured guest. The jewels beneath her long dark lashes were as radiant as when first she heard him say, ‘I love you.’ All the impulses of her impetuous character had centred on this one end of her life. Her eccentricities had tamed themselves in the long discipline of frustrated desire. The breath of her body was love. About her stole a barely perceptible perfume, which invaded the senses, which wrapped the heart in luxury.
Wilfrid dropped on one knee before her and kissed her hand.
‘You are in a happy mood,’ Beatrice said. ‘Who has been telling you the last flattery?’
‘I have seen no one to-day. If I look happy—should I not?’
She drew her finger along the line of his eyebrow.
‘How does your picture get on?’
‘I have to give two sittings next week. Thank goodness they are the last.’
‘Oh! why wasn’t it in time for the Academy! But it must go next year.’
Wilfrid laughed as he seated himself opposite to her.
‘I am not sure, after all, that you are happy,’ she said, leaning her head a little aside as she gazed at him. ‘Now you are thoughtful. I suppose you will be more and more thoughtful.’
‘Deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care—’
quoted Wilfrid, with a little wrying of the lips. ‘This, you know, is one of the penalties of greatness.’
She seemed about to rise, but it was only to slip forward and sink upon her knees by his side, her arms embracing him. It was like the fall of fair waters, so gracefully impulsive, so self-abandoning.
‘Not one kiss to-day?’ she murmured, her voice like the dying of a flute.
And she raised to him a face lit from the inmost sanctuary of love.
‘You are as beautiful,’ he said, ‘as any woman of whom fable ever told. Your beauty frightens me. It is sometimes more than human—as though the loveliest Greek goddess suddenly found breath and colour and the light of eyes.’
Beatrice threw her head far back, laughing silently; he saw the laughter dance upon her throat.
‘My love! my own!’ she whispered. ‘Say you love me!’
‘Dearest, I love you!’
‘Ah! the words make my heart flutter so! I am glad, glad that I have beauty; but for that you would never have loved me. Let me hide my face as I tell you. I used to ask myself whether I was not really fairer than other women—I thought—I hoped! But you were so indifferent. Wilfrid, how long, how long I have loved you! I was quite a young girl when I loved you first. That, I said, shall be my husband, or I will never have one. And I knew so little how to win your thought. How ashamed it makes me to think of things I said and did in those days!’
She was silent, leaning her head against his shoulder.
‘Do you ever think of me as I was at Dunfield?’ she asked presently, with timid utterance, hardly above her breath, risking what she had never yet dared.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I think of the present.’
His voice was a little hard, from the necessity of commanding it.
‘You did not know that I loved you then? Think of me! Pity me!’
He made no answer. Beatrice spoke again, her face veiled against him, her arms pressing closer.
‘You love me with perfect love? I have your whole heart?’
‘I love you only, Beatrice.’
‘And with love as great as you ever knew? Say that to me—Wilfrid, say that!’ She clung to him with passion which was almost terrible. ‘Forgive me! Only remember that you are my life, my soul! I cannot have less than that.’