The Village by the River Part 27

"The truth, of course; we have not studied conventionality much, have we?"

"Then I am unfeignedly glad," said Paul, deliberately.

May had turned rather white. "You don't mince matters certainly."

"No, I don't; but I prefer solitude to living perpetually within sight of unattainable happiness. Our friends.h.i.+p is destroyed, you remember; you admitted as much once. I cannot pretend that you are an ordinary acquaintance, and, therefore, to have you taken out of my reach is really the best thing that could happen to me."

"And you have left any wish I might have about it outside your calculation," said May.

"It cannot signify to you where you live. You will amuse yourself wherever you are."

"It signifies considerably; as I like Rudham, at present, better than any place in the world."

Paul broke into an incredulous laugh.

"I suppose it would be an impertinence to ask your reason for this unaccountable preference?"

"It is a simple one: you live there," said May, with averted face.

Paul sprang to his feet and stood before May with arms folded, and looked down at her with eyes that literally burned.

"May!" he said hoa.r.s.ely, "if it is a joke it is a cruel one."

"Oh, it's true that you have grown stupid!" cried May, between laughter and tears. "It is no joke to have to tell you that I have changed my mind. I love you better than all the world besides."

With an incoherent cry Paul clasped her to his breast.

"My darling! my darling!" he said, after the rapture of that first moment, "I am not worthy, and the sacrifice on your side is too great.

I had no right ever to ask you to marry me. What will the world say of me? I could wish that you had no fortune----"

"Oh, nonsense! you were groaning for want of it just now. It is my own, to do as I like with; and I shall have a lot more, some day, unless mother disinherits me."

"Which reminds me that I have to face her," said Paul, rather ruefully.

"I think you had better go at once," said May, with merry decision, "and leave mother to me. I don't pretend she will like it; but she may consent, as she has been grievously worried by the fear that I was going to be an old maid--and so I should have been but for you."

Paul tried to repossess himself of her hands, but May had glided back to the drawing-room, turning as she left to tell him to call again in the morning. Left to himself, Paul tried to collect his thoughts, and to realize the intense happiness that had come to him. If it were true that May loved him, he would marry her in the face of all opposition, for she knew well enough that he did not care for her money, but for herself. Then he fell again to wondering whether she had sufficiently counted the cost of uniting her life with his, for, in marrying, Paul felt it would be impossible for him to change the whole scheme of his life. His objects and ambitions would be the same after it as before, and, unless May was prepared to share them, they would gradually drift apart. He must put it all before her to-morrow, lest she should make a lifelong mistake.

But May had made no mistake; she knew her own mind, at last, for absence from Paul had taught it her. She had turned with absolute loathing from the mill-round of gaiety which was the only marked characteristic of her life in London; and her thoughts had recurred persistently to Rudham, until finally, in the time of distress, she had followed the dictates of her heart and gone down there. But not until the day of Kitty's funeral, when she stood beside Paul at her grave, had she owned to herself that he was the man she loved: a conviction which deepened into certainty in the weeks which followed, for, although she saw little of him, to be in the place where he lived, and in some way to share his work, made her happy, and gave her a sense of repose which had not been hers since she left.

Mrs. Webster shed some very bitter tears when, after dinner that evening, May announced her engagement.

"It is wicked of him to have asked you! he is as poor as a church mouse!"

"I can't remember, exactly, but I don't think he did ask me," said May, knitting her pretty brows. "He did once before, but I don't think he did to-day. But he was so very miserable that----"

"Well!" interposed Mrs. Webster, "in my young days girls left it to the men to speak."

"Oh, mother, don't scold! I am so happy--happier that I have ever been before. You know you have wished me to marry; let me marry the man I love."

"It is such an ill-a.s.sorted match; he has no money----"

"And I have plenty," said May.

"And how can I ever consent to your living in a cottage?" went on Mrs.

Webster, with a wail of despair.

"Oh, we have not come to that yet!" May answered, unable to check a laugh; "but I dare say he will not wish it. We could live quite simply at the Court. I wonder if we shall run to a house-parlourmaid?"

"It's no laughing matter; you have been used to every luxury, May."

"I have had more than my share. I feel rather a surfeit of the sweetest things."

"And he does not go to church----"

"But he is more in earnest than many of the men who do," said May. "Of this I am sure, that he is seeking after G.o.d; if I were not sure, I do not believe I should have the courage to marry him. A year back I should not have cared what a man thought as long as he led a straight life, but lately I have felt different about things. My own convictions are stronger."

"Well, if we discuss it from now until Doomsday I shall not like it, May; but it is equally certain that if you have set your mind on this man you will not give him up."

"I have set my heart upon him," said May, an unusual softness in her voice. "After all, mother, love is the first thing."

Mrs. Webster sat silent, the tears dropping down her face. Love, either of G.o.d or man, had been no important factor in her life. She had married for money, and such love as she could give had been centred on her one beautiful daughter; but even with her, her ambition was stronger than her love, and it received its deathblow with May's unaccountable choice of a husband. Further opposition she saw to be useless, so she surrendered with as good a grace as possible.

When May's engagement was publicly announced friends poured in to offer congratulations that had a note of surprise behind them; but Mrs.

Webster proved fully equal to the occasion.

"Yes," she said; "May has been a long time making her choice, and now it seems a funny one, doesn't it? But Mr. Lessing is a very clever man, and May became bitten with his views first, and with the propounder of them afterwards. He is the sort of man who will make a career for himself yet. I believe he means to stand for ---- in the autumn."

Perhaps no one received the news with such genuine delight as Sally, who came flying up to Park Lane directly she heard of it.

"I've always thought Paul the nicest man in the world, and you the most fascinating woman; and that you should make a match of it is ideally delightful," she said. "It really is very funny, though, when I come to think of it, and look back at that night in Brussels."

"What about that night at Brussels?" asked Paul, who had entered the room unperceived by either of the girls. But Sally laughed and held her tongue.

"If you had stayed away a minute longer I should have wormed the truth out of the too-truthful Sally," May said, turning upon him with a smile. "You clearly hated me."

"I don't think I ever hated you. I believe I struggled from the first against a tremendous fascination that you possessed for me. I quarrelled with your surroundings, with your money rather than with you."

"It is a distinct judgment that that same money will enable you to carry out all your schemes," May said quaintly, "from the new cottages to the seat in Parliament."

"I shall wish you to do exactly what you like, May."

"And what else could give me so much pleasure?"

"Oh, May, how perfectly lovely it all sounds!" cried Sally, enthusiastically. "And shall you have open-air evenings on the bowling-green for the village people, with a band playing and every one dancing? If so, ask me down with a contingent of girls."

When Paul returned to Rudham and informed Mrs. Macdonald of his approaching marriage, he was a little puzzled by the look of alarm with which she received the news.