Hills of the Shatemuc Part 163

"No," said Elizabeth, -- "but my words are safe."

"I want you to give me something."

"You preface it as if it were some great thing, and you look as if it was nothing," thought Elizabeth a little in wonderment. But she said only,

"You may have it. What is it?"

"Guess."

"I can't possibly."

"You are incautious. You don't know what you are giving away."

"What is it?" said Elizabeth a little impatiently.

"Yourself."

Elizabeth looked quick away, not to see anything, with the mind's eye or any other, for a blur came over both. She was no fainter; she was strong of mind and body; but the one and the other were shaken; and for that bit of time, and it was several minutes, her senses performed no office at all. And when consciousness of distinct things began to come back, there came among all her other feelings an odd perverse fear of shewing the uppermost one or two, and a sort of mortified unreadiness to strike her colours and yield at once without having made a bit of fight for it. Yet these were not the uppermost feelings, but they were there, among them and struggling with them. She stood quite still, her face hidden by her sunbonnet, and her companion was quite still too, with her hand still in his, held in the same free light clasp; and she had a vexed consciousness of his being far the cooler of the two. While she was thus silent, however, Elizabeth's head, and her very figure, was bowed lower and lower with intensity of feeling.

"What is the matter?" Winthrop said; and the tone of those words conquered her. The proud Miss Haye made a very humble answer.

"I am very glad, Mr. Landholm -- but I am not good enough."

"For what?"

But Elizabeth did not answer.

"I will take my risk of that," said he kindly. "Besides, you have confessed the power of changing."

The risk, or something else, seemed to lie upon Elizabeth's mind, from the efforts she was making to overcome emotion.

Winthrop observed her for a moment.

"But you have not spoken, yet," said he. "I want a confirmation of my grant."

She knew from his tone that his mood was the very reverse of hers; and it roused the struggle again. "Provoking man!" she thought, "why couldn't he ask me in any other way! -- And why need he smile when I am crying! --" She commanded herself to raise her head, however, though she did not dare look.

"Am I to have it?"

"To have what?"

"An answer."

"I don't know what it's to be, Mr. Landholm," Elizabeth stammered. "What do you want?"

"Will you give me what I asked you for?"

"I thought you knew you had it already," she said, not a little vexed to have the words drawn from her.

"It is mine, then?"

"Yes --"

"Then," said he, coming in full view of her blus.h.i.+ng face and taking the other hand, -- "what are you troubled for?"

Elizabeth could not have borne it one instant, to meet his eye, without breaking into a flood of tears she had no hands to cover. As her only way of escape, she sprang to one side freeing one of her hands on the sudden, and jumped down the rock, muttering something very unintelligibly about 'breakfast.' But her other hand was fast still, and so was she at the foot of the rock.

"Stop," said Winthrop, -- "we must take this basket along. -- I don't know if there is anything very precious in it." --

He reached after it as he spoke, and then they went on; and by the help of his hand her backward journey over rocks, stones, and trunks of trees in the path, was easily and lightly made; till they reached the little bit of meadow. Which backward journey Elizabeth accomplished in about two minutes and a quarter. There Winthrop transferred to his arm the hand that had rested in his, and walked more leisurely.

"Are you in such a hurry for your breakfast?" said he. "I have had mine."

"Had it! -- before you came out?"

"No," -- said he smiling, -- "since."

"Are you laughing at me? -- or have you had it?" said Elizabeth looking puzzled.

"Both," said Winthrop. "What are you trembling so for?"

It hushed Elizabeth again, till they got quit of the meadow, and began more slowly still, the ascent of the rough half-made wheel-road.

"Miss Haye --" said Winthrop gently.

She paused in her walk, looking at him.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Thinking of! --"

"Yes. You don't look as happy as I feel."

"I am," -- she said.

"How do you know?"

What a colour spread over Elizabeth's face! But she laughed too, so perhaps his end was gained.

"I was thinking," she said, with the desperate need of saying something, -- "a little while ago, when you were helping me through the woods, -- how a very few minutes before, I had been so quite alone in the world."

"Don't forget there is one arm that never can fail you," he replied gravely. "Mine may."

Elizabeth looked at him rather timidly, and his face changed.

"There was no harm in that," he said, with so bright an expression as she had never before seen given to her. "What will you say, if I tell you that I myself at that same time was thinking over in my mind very much the same thing -- with relation to myself, I mean."

Elizabeth's heart beat and her breath came short. That was what she had never thought of. Like many another woman, what _he_ was to her, she knew well; what _she_ might be to him, it had never entered her head to think. It seemed almost a new and superfluous addition to her joy, yet not superfluous from that time forth for ever. Once known, it was too precious a thought to be again untasted. She hung her head over it; she stepped all unwittingly on rocks and short gra.s.s and wet places and dry, wherever she was led. It made her heart beat thick to think she could be so valued. How was it possible! How she wished -- how keenly -- that she could have been of the solid purity of silver or gold, to answer the value put upon her.

But instead of that -- what a far-off difference! Winthrop could not know how great, or he would never have said that, or felt it; nor could he. What about her could possibly have attracted it?