DANGER.
Sir Harry took his coffee with us, and read to me a little now and then from the papers which had come by the late mails. Mr. Blount had farming news to tell Richard. It was a dreadful tea-party.
I was only able that night to appoint with Richard to meet me, next day, at our accustomed trysting-place.
Three o’clock was our hour of meeting. The stupid, feverish day dragged on, and the time at length arrived. I got on my things quickly, and trembling lest I should be joined by Sir Harry or Mr. Blount, I betook myself through the orchard, and by the wicket in the hedge, to the lonely path through the thick woods where we had, a few months since, plighted our troth.
Richard appeared very soon; he was approaching by the path opposite to that by which I had come.
The foliage was thick and the boughs hang low in that place. You could have fancied him a figure walking in the narrow passage of a monastery, so dark and well-defined is the natural roofing of the pathway there. He raised his open hand, and shook his head as he drew near; he was not smiling; he looked very sombre.
He glanced back over his shoulder, and looked sharply down the path I had come by, and being now very near me, with another gloomy shake of the head, he said, with a tone and look of indescribable reproach and sorrow: “So Ethel has her secrets, and tells me but half her mind.”
“What can you mean, Richard?”
“Ah! Ethel, I would not have treated you so,” he continued.
“You distract me, Richard; what have I done?”
“I have heard it all by accident, I may say, from old Mr. Blount, who has been simpleton enough to tell me. You have asked my uncle to take you to London, and you are going.”
“Asked him! I have all but implored of him to leave me here. I never heard a word of it till last night, as we returned together in the boat. Oh! Richard, how could you think such things? That is the very thing I have been so longing to talk to you about.”
“Ethel, darling, are you opening your heart entirely to me now; is there no reserve? No; I am sure there is not; you need not answer.”
“It is distracting news; is there nothing I can do to prevent it?” I said.
He looked miserable enough, as walking slowly along the path, and sometimes standing still, we talked it over.
“Yes,” he said; “the danger is that you may lead him by resistance to look for some secret motive. If he should suspect our engagement, few worse misfortunes could befall us. Good heavens! shall I ever have a quiet home? Ethel, I know what will happen — you will go to London; I shall be forgotten. It will end in the ruin of all my hopes.” So he raved on.
I wept, and upbraided, and vowed my old vows over again.
At length after this tempestuous scene had gone on for some time, we two walking side by side up and down the path, and sometimes stopping short, I crying, if you will, like a fool, he took my hand and looked in my face very sadly, and he said after a little:
“Only I know that he would show more anger, I should have thought that my uncle knew of our engagement, and was acting expressly to frustrate it. He has found work for me at his property near Hull, and from that I am to go to Warwickshire, so that I suppose I can’t be here again before the middle of October, and long before then you will be at Brighton, where, Mr. Blount says, he means to take you first, and from that to London.”
“But you are not to leave this immediately?” I said.
He smiled bitterly, and answered:
“He takes good care I shall. I am to leave this to-morrow morning.”
I could not speak for a moment.
“Oh, Richard, Richard, how am I to live through this separation?” I cried wildly. “You must contrive some way to see me. I shall die unless you do.”
“Come, Ethel, let us think it over; it seems to me that we have nothing for it, for the present, but submission. I am perfectly certain that our attachment is not suspected. If it were, far more cruel and effectual measures would be taken. We must, therefore, be cautious. Let us betray nothing of our feelings. You shall see me undergo the ordeal with the appearance of carelessness, and even cheerfulness, although my heart be bursting. You, darling, must do the same; one way or other I will manage to see you sometimes, and to correspond regularly. We are bound each to the other by promises we dare not break, and when I desert you, may God desert me! Ethel, will you say the same?”
“Yes, Richard,” I repeated, vehemently, through sobs, “when I forsake you, may God forsake me! You know I could not live without you. Oh! Richard, darling, how shall I see you all this evening, knowing it to be the last? How can I look at you, or hear your voice, and yet no sign, and talk or listen just as usual, as if nothing had gone wrong? Richard, is there no way to escape? Do you think if we told your uncle? Might it not be the best thing after all? Could it possibly make matters worse?”
“Yes, it would, a great deal worse; that is not to be thought of,” said Richard, with a thoughtful frown; “I know him better than you do. No; we have nothing for it but patience, and entire trust in one another. As for me, if I am away from you, the more solitary I am, the more bearable my lot. With you it will be different; you will soon be in the stream and whirl of your old life. I shall lose you, Ethel.” He stamped on the ground, and struck his forehead with his open hand in sheer distraction. “As for me, I can enjoy nothing without you; I may have been violent, wicked, reckless, what you will; but selfish or fickle, no one ever called me.”
I was interrupting him all the time with my passionate vows of fidelity, which he seemed hardly to hear; he was absorbed in his own thoughts. After a silence of a minute or two, he said, suddenly:
“Look here, Ethel; if you don’t like your London life, you can’t be as well there as here, and you can, if you will, satisfy my uncle that you are better, as well as happier, here at Golden Friars. You can do that, and that is the way to end it — the only way to end it that I see. You can write to me, Ethel, without danger. You will, I know, every day, just a line; and when you tell me how to address mine, you shall have an answer by every post. Don’t go out in London, Ethel; you must promise that.”
I did, vehemently and reproachfully. I wondered how he could suspect me of wishing to go out. But I could not resent the jealousy that proved his love.
It was, I think, just at this moment that I heard a sound that made my heart bound within me, and then sink with terror. It was the clear, deep voice of Sir Harry, so near that it seemed a step must bring him round the turn in the path, and full in view of us.
“Go, darling, quickly,” said Richard, pressing me gently with one hand, and with the other pointing in the direction furthest from the voice that was so near a signal of danger. He himself turned, and walked quickly to meet Sir Harry, who was conferring with his ranger about thinning the timber.
I was out of sight in a moment, and, in agitation indescribable, made my way home.