Hall Caine - A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time

"How happy you look, Greta!" he said, fixing his eyes upon her.

A new light brightened her sunny face. "Not happier than I feel," she answered. She swung the arm over which the bonnet hung; the heaving of her breast showed the mold of her early womanhood.

Hugh Ritson's mind had for the last half hour brooded over many a good purpose, but not one of them was now left.

"You witnessed a painful scene to-day," he said, with some hesitation. "Be sure it was no less painful to me because you were there to see it."

"Oh, I was so sorry," said Greta, impetuously. "You mean with your father?"

Hugh bent his head slightly. "It was inevitable – I know that full well – but for my share in it I ask your pardon."

"That is nothing," she said; "but you took your father too seriously."

"I took him at his word – that was all."

"But the dear old man meant nothing, and you meant very much. He only wanted to abuse you a little, and perhaps frighten you, and shake his stick at you, and then love you all the better for it."

"You may be right, Greta. Among the whims of nature there is that of making such human contradictions; but, as you say, I take things seriously – everything – life itself."

He paused, and there was a slight trembling of the lip.

"Besides," he went on in another tone, "it has been always so. Since our childhood – my brother's and mine – there has not been much paternal tenderness wasted on me. I can hardly expect it now."

"Surely that must be a morbid fancy," Greta said in a distressed tone. The light was dying out of her eyes. She made one quick glance downward to where Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed on the road, and then, in an instant of recovered consciousness, she glanced up, now confused and embarrassed, into his face.

She was too late; he had read her thought. A faint smile parted her lips; and the light of his own eyes was cold.

"No; not that," he said; "I ask no pity in that regard – and need none. Nature has given my brother a physique that would shame a Greek statue, but he and I are quits – perhaps more than quits."

He made a hard smile, and she flushed deep with shame of having her thought read.

"I am sorry if I conveyed that," she said, slowly. "It must have been quite unwittingly. I was thinking of your mother. She is so good and tender to everybody. Why, she is the angel of the country-side. Do you know what name they've given her?"

Hugh shook his head.

"Saint Grace! Parson Christian told me – it seems it was my own dear mother who christened her."

"Nevertheless, there has not been much to sweeten my life, Greta," he said.

His voice arrested her; it was charged with unusual feeling. She made no answer, and they began to walk toward the house.

After a few steps Greta remembered the trick that she had played on Paul, and craned her beautiful neck to see over the stone cobble-hedge into the field where she had left him.

Hugh observed her intently.

"I hear that you have decided. Is it so, Greta?" he said.

"Decided what?" she asked, coloring again.

He also colored slightly, and answered with a strained quietness.

"To marry my brother."

"If he wishes it – I suppose he does – he says so, you know."

Hugh looked earnestly into the girl's glowing face, and said with deliberation:

"Greta, perhaps there are reasons why you should not marry Paul."

"What reasons?"

He did not reply at once, and she repeated her question. Then he said in a strange tone:

"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."

Greta's eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.

"Impossible – you cannot mean it," she said with her customary impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh's face, and misread what she saw there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."

"Do you then love him?"

Greta started.

"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother, Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."

She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some distracting exercise.

Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher. He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness – what man of brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse – true! That moment of temptation threatened painful consequences – still true! What then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever? Tut! – all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of noble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta's beautiful countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:

"Your brother – yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished another name?"

The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:

"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"

"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.

"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had seen it – before you had realized it."

The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.

"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her, "what is the love that scarcely knows itself? – that is the love with which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid passion of a man of no mind? – that is the love which he offers you. What is your love for him, or his for you? – what is it, can it be? Love is not love unless it is the love of true minds. That was said long ago, Greta, and how true it is!" He went on quickly, in a tone of dull irritation: "All other love is no better than lust. Greta, I understand you. It is not for a rude man like my brother to do so." Then in an eager voice he said: "Dearest, I bring you a love undreamed of among these country boors."

"Country boors!" she repeated in a half-stifled whisper.

He did not hear her. His vehement eyes swam, and he was dizzy.

"Greta, dearest, I said there has been little in my life to sweeten it. Yet I am a man made to love and to be loved. My love for you has been mute for months; but it can be mute no longer. Perhaps I have had my own impediment, apart from our love for Paul. But that is all over now."

His cheeks quivered, his lips trembled, his voice swelled, his nervous fingers were riveted to his palm. He approached her and took her hand. She seemed to be benumbed by strong feeling. She had stood as one transfixed, a slow paralysis of surprise laying hold of her faculties. But at his touch her senses regained their mastery. She flung away his hand. Her breast heaved. In a voice charged with indignation, she said:

"So this is what you mean! I understand you at last!"

Huge Ritson fell back a pace.

"Greta, hear me – hear me again!"

But she had found her voice indeed.

"Sir, you have outraged your brother's heart as surely as if at this moment I had been your brother's wife!"

"Greta, think before you speak – think, I implore you!"

"I have thought! I have thought of you as your sister might think, and spoken to you as my brother. Now I know how mean of soul you are!"