When I look forward and see what it might be if you were with me, how green it all looks and how lovely, in spite of all the vows I have made, I cannot help coming back again.' She was now again near the window, and he had not followed her. As she neither turned towards him nor answered him, he moved from the table near which he was standing on to the rug before the fire, and leaned with both his elbows on the mantelpiece. He could still watch her in the mirror above the fireplace, and could see that she was still seeming to gaze out upon the street. And had he not moved her? I think he had so far moved her now, that she had ceased to think of the woman who had written to her --that she had ceased to reject him in her heart on the score of such levities as that! If there were M Ds, like sunken rocks, in his course, whose fault was it? He was ready enough to steer his bark into the tranquil blue waters if only she would aid him. I think that all his sins on this score were at this moment forgiven him. He had told her now what to him would be green and beautiful, and she did not find herself able to disbelieve him. She had banished M D out of her mind, but in doing so she admitted other reminiscences into it. And then--was she in a moment to be talked out of the resolution of years; and was she to give up herself, not because she loved, but because the man who talked to her talked so well that he deserved a reward? Was she now to be as light, as foolish, as easy, as in those former days from which she had learned her wisdom? A picture of green lovely things could be delicious to her eyes as to his; but even for such a picture as that the price might be too dear! Of all living men--of all men living in their present lives--she loved best this man who was now waiting for some word of answer to his words, and she did love him dearly; she would have tended him if sick, have supplied him if in want; have mourned for him if dead, with the bitter grief of true affection;--but she could not say to herself that he should be her lord and master, the head of her house, the owner of herself, the ruler of her life. The shipwreck to which she had once come, and the fierce regrets which had thence arisen, had forced her to think too much of these things. 'Lily,' he said, still facing towards the mirror, 'will you not come to me and speak to me?' She turned round, and stood a moment looking at him, and then, having again resolved that it could not be as he wished, she drew near to him. 'Certainly I will speak to you, John. Here I am.' And she came close to him.
He took both her hands, and looked into her eyes. 'Lily, will you be mine?'
'No; dear; it cannot be so.'
'Why not, Lily?'
'Because of that other man.'
'And is that to be a bar for ever?'
'Yes; for ever.'
'Do you still love him?'
'No; no, no!'
'Then why should this be so?'
'I cannot tell, dear. It is so. If you take a young tree and split it, it still lives, perhaps. But it isn't a tree. It is only a fragment.'
'Then be my fragment.'
'So I will, if I can serve you to give standing ground to such a fragment in some corner of your garden. But I will not have myself planted out in the middle, for people to look at. What there is left would die soon.' He still held her hands, and she did not attempt to draw them away. 'John,' she said, 'next to mamma, I love you better than all the world. Indeed I do. I can't be your wife, but you need never be afraid that I shall be more to another than I am to you.'
'That will not serve me,' he said, grasping both her hands till he almost hurt them, but not knowing that he did so. 'That is no good.'
'It is all the good that I can do you. Indeed I can do you--can do no one any good. The trees that the storms have splintered are never of use.'
'And is this to be the end of it, Lily?'
'Not of our loving friendship.'
'Friendship! I hate the word. I hear someone's step, and I had better leave you. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye, John. Be kinder than that to me as you are going.' He turned back for a moment, took her hand, and held it tight against his heart, and then he left her. In the hall he met Mrs Thorne, but, as she said afterwards, he had been too much knocked about to be able to throw a word to a dog.
To Mrs Thorne Lily said hardly a word about John Eames, and when her cousin Bernard questioned her about him she was dumb. And in these days she could assume a manner, and express herself with her eyes as well as with her voice, after a fashion, which was apt to silence unwelcome questions, even though they were intimate with her as was her cousin Bernard. She had described her feelings more plainly to her lover than she had ever done to anyone--even to her mother; and having done so she meant to be silent on that subject for evermore. But of her settled purpose, she did say some word to Emily Dunstable that night. 'I do feel,' she said, 'that I have got the thing settled at last.'
'And have you settled it, as you call it, in opposition to the wishes of all your friends?'
'That is true; and yet I have settled it rightly, and I would not for worlds have it unsettled again. There are matters on which friends should not have wishes, or at any rate should not express them.'
'Is that meant to be severe to me?'
'No; not to you. I was thinking about mamma, and Bell, and my uncle, and Bernard, who all seem to think that I am to be looked upon as a regular castaway because I am not likely to have a husband of my own. Of course you, in your position, must think a girl a castaway who isn't going to be married?'
'I think that a girl who is going to be married has the best of it.'
'And I think a girl who isn't going to be married has the best of it;--that's all. But I feel that the thing is done now, and I am contented. For the last six or eight months there has come up, I know not how, a state of doubt which as made me so wretched that I have done literally nothing. I haven't been able to finish old Mrs Heard's tippet, literally because people would talk to me about that dearest of all dear fellows, John Eames. And yet all along I have known how it would be--as well as I do now.'
'I cannot understand you, Lily; I can't indeed.'
'I can understand myself. I love him so well--with that intimate, close, familiar affection--that I could wash his clothes for him tomorrow, out of pure personal regard, and think it no shame. He could not ask me to do a single thing for him--except one thing--that I would refuse. And I'll go further. I would sooner marry him than any other man I ever saw, or, as I believe, that I ever shall see. And yet I am glad that it is settled.'
On the next day Lily Dale went down to the Small House of Allington, and so she passes out of sight. I can only ask the reader to believe that she was in earnest, and express my opinion, in this last word, that Ishall ever write respecting her, that she will live and die as Lily Dale.