Elfie, I wish we could be married! It is wrong for me to say it—I know it is—before you know more; but I wish we might be, all the same. Do you love me deeply, deeply?’
‘No!’ she said in a fluster.
At this point-blank denial, Stephen turned his face away decisively, and preserved an ominous silence; the only objects of interest on earth for him being apparently the three or four-score sea-birds circling in the air afar off.
‘I didn’t mean to stop you quite,’ she faltered with some alarm; and seeing that he still remained silent, she added more anxiously, ‘If you say that again, perhaps, I will not be quite—quite so obstinate—if—if you don’t like me to be.’
‘Oh, my Elfride!’ he exclaimed, and kissed her.
It was Elfride’s first kiss. And so awkward and unused was she; full of striving—no relenting. There was none of those apparent struggles to get out of the trap which only results in getting further in: no final attitude of receptivity: no easy close of shoulder to shoulder, hand upon hand, face upon face, and, in spite of coyness, the lips in the right place at the supreme moment. That graceful though apparently accidental falling into position, which many have noticed as precipitating the end and making sweethearts the sweeter, was not here. Why? Because experience was absent. A woman must have had many kisses before she kisses well.
In fact, the art of tendering the lips for these amatory salutes follows the principles laid down in treatises on legerdemain for performing the trick called Forcing a Card. The card is to be shifted nimbly, withdrawn, edged under, and withal not to be offered till the moment the unsuspecting person’s hand reaches the pack; this forcing to be done so modestly and yet so coaxingly, that the person trifled with imagines he is really choosing what is in fact thrust into his hand.
Well, there were no such facilities now; and Stephen was conscious of it—first with a momentary regret that his kiss should be spoilt by her confused receipt of it, and then with the pleasant perception that her awkwardness was her charm.
‘And you do care for me and love me?’ said he.
‘Yes.’
‘Very much?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I mustn’t ask you if you’ll wait for me, and be my wife some day?’
‘Why not?’ she said naively.
‘There is a reason why, my Elfride.’
‘Not any one that I know of.’
‘Suppose there is something connected with me which makes it almost impossible for you to agree to be my wife, or for your father to countenance such an idea?’
‘Nothing shall make me cease to love you: no blemish can be found upon your personal nature. That is pure and generous, I know; and having that, how can I be cold to you?’
‘And shall nothing else affect us—shall nothing beyond my nature be a part of my quality in your eyes, Elfie?’
‘Nothing whatever,’ she said with a breath of relief. ‘Is that all? Some outside circumstance? What do I care?’
‘You can hardly judge, dear, till you know what has to be judged. For that, we will stop till we get home. I believe in you, but I cannot feel bright.’
‘Love is new, and fresh to us as the dew; and we are together. As the lover’s world goes, this is a great deal. Stephen, I fancy I see the difference between me and you—between men and women generally, perhaps. I am content to build happiness on any accidental basis that may lie near at hand; you are for making a world to suit your happiness.’
‘Elfride, you sometimes say things which make you seem suddenly to become five years older than you are, or than I am; and that remark is one. I couldn’t think so OLD as that, try how I might. … And no lover has ever kissed you before?’
‘Never.’
‘I knew that; you were so unused. You ride well, but you don’t kiss nicely at all; and I was told once, by my friend Knight, that that is an excellent fault in woman.’
‘Now, come; I must mount again, or we shall not be home by dinner-time.’ And they returned to where Pansy stood tethered. ‘Instead of entrusting my weight to a young man’s unstable palm,’ she continued gaily, ‘I prefer a surer “upping-stock” (as the villagers call it), in the form of a gate. There—now I am myself again.’
They proceeded homeward at the same walking pace.
Her blitheness won Stephen out of his thoughtfulness, and each forgot everything but the tone of the moment.
‘What did you love me for?’ she said, after a long musing look at a flying bird.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied idly.
‘Oh yes, you do,’ insisted Elfride.
‘Perhaps, for your eyes.’
‘What of them?—now, don’t vex me by a light answer. What of my eyes?’
‘Oh, nothing to be mentioned. They are indifferently good.’
‘Come, Stephen, I won’t have that. What did you love me for?’
‘It might have been for your mouth?’
‘Well, what about my mouth?’
‘I thought it was a passable mouth enough——’
‘That’s not very comforting.’
‘With a pretty pout and sweet lips; but actually, nothing more than what everybody has.’
‘Don’t make up things out of your head as you go on, there’s a dear Stephen. Now—what—did—you—love—me—for?’
‘Perhaps, ’twas for your neck and hair; though I am not sure: or for your idle blood, that did nothing but wander away from your cheeks and back again; but I am not sure. Or your hands and arms, that they eclipsed all other hands and arms; or your feet, that they played about under your dress like little mice; or your tongue, that it was of a dear delicate tone. But I am not altogether sure.’
‘Ah, that’s pretty to say; but I don’t care for your love, if it made a mere flat picture of me in that way, and not being sure, and such cold reasoning; but what you FELT I was, you know, Stephen’ (at this a stealthy laugh and frisky look into his face), ‘when you said to yourself, “I’ll certainly love that young lady.” ’
‘I never said it.’
‘When you said to yourself, then, “I never will love that young lady.” ’
‘I didn’t say that, either.’
‘Then was it, “I suppose I must love that young lady?” ’
‘No.’
‘What,
