"Pray sit down," said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap;"I am very glad you were here." Will thought that her face looked just as it did when she first shook hands with him in Rome;for her widow's cap, fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she had lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her agitation had vanished at the sight of him;she had been used, when they were face to face, always to feel confidence and the happy ******* which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other people's words hinder that effect on a sudden?
Let the music which can take possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more--what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its absence?
"I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking leave to see you," said Will, seating himself opposite to her. "I am going away immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again.""I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago--you thought you were going then," said Dorothea, her voice trembling a little.
"Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now--things which have altered my feelings about the future. When Isaw you before, I was dreaming that I might come back some day.
I don't think I ever shall--now." Will paused here.
"You wished me to know the reasons?" said Dorothea, timidly.
"Yes," said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking away from her with irritation in his face. "Of course I must wish it.
I have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others.
There has been a mean implication against my character. I wish you to know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by--under no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I sought money under the pretext of seeking--something else.
There was no need of other safeguard against me--the safeguard of wealth was enough."Will rose from his chair with the last word and went--he hardly knew where; but it was to the projecting window nearest him, which had been open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had stood within it and talked together. Her whole heart was going out at this moment in sympathy with Will's indignation:
she only wanted to convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly world.
"It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any meanness to you," she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old place in the window, saying, "Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in you?"When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the window, without meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement following up the previous anger of his tone.
She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much. At this moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a belief.
She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word--"I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and miserable after his angry outburst. He went to the table and fastened up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the distance.
They were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence.
What could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter? What could she say, since she might offer him no help--since she was forced to keep the money that ought to have been his?--since to-day he seemed not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?
But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the window again.
"I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and burned with gazing too close at a light.
"What shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly. "Have your intentions remained just the same as when we said good-by before?""Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as uninteresting. "I shall work away at the first thing that offers.
I suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope.""Oh, what sad words!" said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob.
Then trying to smile, she added, "We used to agree that we were alike in speaking too strongly.""I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against the angle of the wall. "There are certain things which a man can only go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that the best is over with him. This experience has happened to me while I am very young--that is all. What I care more for than Ican ever care for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me--I don't mean merely by being out of my reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my reach, by my own pride and honor--by everything I respect myself for. Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in a trance."Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly; but still--it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he would never woo her.
It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing.
But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another vision than his. The thought that she herself might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: