Роберт Чамберс - The Hidden Children

"What folly!" She began to laugh nervously, then shrugged her shoulders, adding: "This young man is plainly partizan and deaf to reason."

"Being in love."

"You! In love! What nonsense!"

"Do you doubt it?"

"Oh!" she said carelessly. "You are in love with love—as all men are—and not particularly in love with me. Men, my dear Euan, are gamblers. When first you saw me in tatters, you laid a wager with yourself that I'd please you in silks. A gay hazard! A sporting wager! And straight you dressed me up to suit you; and being a man, and therefore conceited, you could scarcely admit that you had lost your wager to your better senses. Could you? But now you shall admit that in this frowsy, woollen gown the magic of both Cinderella and the Princess vanishes with yesterday's enchantment, and, instead of Chloe, pink and simpering, only a sturdy comrade stands revealed who now, as guerdon for the future, strikes hands with you—like this! Koue!" And with the clear and joyous cry on her lips she struck my palm violently with hers, nor winced under my quick–closing grip.

"Is all now clear and plain between us, Euan?" she inquired. And it seemed to me that her eagerness and fervour rang false.

"You can not love me, then?" I asked in a low voice.

"I? What has love to do with us—here in the woods—and I without knowledge and experience―"

"You do not love me, then?"

"I can not."

"Why?"

She made no answer, but bit her lip.

"You need not reply," said I. "Yet—that night I left Otsego—and when I passed you in the dark—I thought―"

"My heart was full that night! What comrade could feel less and still possess a human heart?" she said almost sullenly.

"Your letter—and mine—encouraged me to believe―"

"I know," she said, with the curt and almost breathless impatience of haste, "but have I ever denied our bond of intimacy, Euan? Closer bond have I with no man. But it must be a comrade's bond between us…. I meant to make that plain to you—and doubtless, my heart being full—and I but a girl—conveyed to you—by what I said—and did―"

"Lois! Is it not in you to love me as a woman loves a man?"

"I told you that when the time arrived I would doubtless be what you wish me to be―"

"You can love me, then?"

"How do I know? You perplex and vex me. Who else would I love but you? Who else is there in the world—except my mother?"

There was a silence; then I said:

"Has this passionate quest of her so wholly absorbed and controlled you that all else counts as nothing?"

"Yes, yes! You know it. You knew it at Otsego! Nothing else matters. I will not permit anything else to matter! And, lest you deem me cold, thankless, inhuman, ask of yourself, Euan, why such a lonely girl as I should close her eyes and stop her ears and lock her heart and—and turn her face away when the man—to whom she owes all—to whom she is—utterly devoted—urges her toward emotions—toward matters strange to her—and too profound as yet. So I ask you, for a time, to let what sleeps within us both lie sleeping, undisturbed. There is a love more natural, more imperious, more passionate still; and—it has led me here! And I will not confuse it with any other sentiment; nor share it with any man—not even with you—dear as you have become to me—lonely as I am,—no, not even with you will I share it! For I have vowed that I shall never slake my thirst with love save first in her dear embrace…. After these wistful, stark, and barren years—loveless, weary, naked, and unkind―" Suddenly she covered her face with her hands, bowing her head to her knees.

"Yet you bid me hope, Lois?" I asked under my breath.

She nodded.

"You make me happy beyond words," I whispered.

She looked up from her hands:

"Is that all you required to make you happy?"

"Can I ask more?"

"I—I thought men were more ruthless—more imperious and hotly impatient with the mistress of their hearts—if truly I am mistress of yours, as you tell me."

"I am impatient only for your happiness; ruthless only to secure it."

"For my happiness? Not for your own?"

"How can that come to me save when yours comes to you?"

"Oh!…I did not understand. I had not thought it mattered very greatly to men, so that they found their happiness—so that they found contentment in their sweethearts' yielding…. Then my surrender would mean nothing to you unless I yielded happily?"

"Nothing. Good God! In what school have you learned of love!"

She nodded thoughtfully, looking me in the eyes.

"What you tell me, Euan, is pleasant to think on. It reassures and comforts; nay, it is the sweetest thing you ever said to me—that you could find no happiness in my yielding unless I yield happily…. Why, Euan, that alone would win me—were it time. It clears up much that I have never understood concerning you…. Men have not used me gently…. And then you came…. And I thought you must be like the others, being a man, except that you are the only one to whom I was at all inclined—perhaps because you were from the beginning gentler and more honest with me…. What a way to win a woman's heart! To seek her happiness first of all!…Could you give me to another—if my happiness required it?"

"What else could I do, Lois?"

"Would you do that!" she demanded hotly.

"Have I any choice?"

"Not if your strange creed be sincere. Is it sincere?"

"There is no other creed for those who really love."

"You are wrong," she said angrily, looking at me with tightened lips.

"How wrong?"

"Because—I would not give you to another woman, though you cried out for her till the heavens fell!"

I began to laugh, but her eyes still harboured lightning.

"You should not go to her, whether or not you loved her!" she repeated. "I would not have it. I would not endure it!"

"Yet—if I loved another―"

"No! That is treason! Your happiness should be in me. And if you wavered I would hold you prisoner against your treacherous and very self!"

"How could you hold me?"

"What? Why—why—I―" She sat biting her scarlet lips and thinking, with straight brows deeply knitted, her greyish–purple eyes fixed hard on me. Then a slight colour stained her cheeks, and she looked elsewhere, murmuring: "I do not know how I would hold you prisoner. But I know I should do it, somehow."

"I know it, too," said I, looking at my ring she wore.

She blushed hotly: "It is well that you do, Euan. Death is the dire penalty if my prisoner escapes!" She hesitated, bit her lip, then added faintly: "Death for me, I mean." After a moment she slowly lifted her eyes to mine, and so still and clear were they that it seemed my regard plunged to the very depths of her.

"You do love me then," I said, taking her hand in mine.

Her face paled, and she caught her breath.

"Will you not wait—a little while—before you court me?" she faltered. "Will you not wait because I ask it of you?"

"Yes, I will wait."

"Nor speak of love—until―"

"Nor speak of love until you bid me speak."

"Nor—caress me—nor touch me—nor look in my eyes—this way―" Her hand had melted somehow closely into mine. We both were trembling now; and she withdrew her hand and slowly pressed it close against her heart, gazing at me in a white and childish wonder, as though dumb and reproachful of some wound that I had dealt her. And as I saw her there, so hurt and white and sweet, all quivering under the first swift consciousness of love, I trembled, too, with the fierce desire to take her in my arms and whisper what was raging in my heart of passionate assurance and devotion.

And I said nothing, nor did she. But presently the wild–rose tint crept back into her pale cheeks, and her head dropped, and she sat with eyes remote and vaguely sweet, her hands listless in her lap.